Of One Blood: John's Adventures in the Jungle
by tiltedsyllogism
Summary: Sherlock/Jungle Book fusion. 9 ch total. Rather than writing completely from scratch, I have used Rudyard Kipling's Kipling's Mowgli stories as a base text and adapted heavily. Most of the characters from Sherlock here, fused with characters from TJB (FU, 4 character limit!) To help with the names, there is a glossary at my lj: tiltedsyllogism dot livejournal dot com /2830 dot html
1. How John Became A Wolf

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills of the jungle when Martha Mother-Wolf realized that all four of her cubs had finally fallen asleep. Sliding herself away from their small warm bodies, she scratched herself, yawned, and spread out her paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. "Augrh!" she said. "It is time to hunt again." She crept to the front of the cave, where the evening light fell golden and spackled, to await the arrival of Akela Wolf. After Father Wolf fell in the hunt, just before the last full moon, Martha Mother-Wolf had gone back to hunting, heavy as she was with young. Now she could not leave the young cubs alone, but help was coming, as it came every night. She lay down at the mouth of the cave with her chin on her paws and waited.

Soon she saw two familiar figures coming over the brow of the hill. The sun was now low enough that she could not watch their approach, but a minute later a familiar voice growled low: "Good hunting to you, Mother Wolf. Is there room in your cave for two more of the Free People?"

It was Akela, who led the Pack. He was wily and cunning, and for this he was called the Lone Wolf, though in fact he was rarely alone. Everywhere Akela went, there traveled with him a young female wolf who carried, in her jaws, a large palm-leaf to shield him from the sun and rain. Akela Wolf was a fierce fighter and a keen strategist, but he preferred to be clean and saw no value in discomfort.

"Enter, and welcome," said Martha Mother-Wolf, rising to her feet. "It is thanks to you that there will be hunting."

Akela's attendant-wolf said nothing, but upon crossing the threshold lay down and began to nose at her own paws, seemingly unconcerned with the others. Akela for his part paced to the back of the cave, where he looked appraisingly at the four sleeping cubs.

"They grow well," he remarked.

"They are healthy and strong," she answered, from over his shoulder as she gazed at them also.

"And so may they remain," Akela said. He kept his eyes on the cubs, but did not lie down.

Martha Mother-Wolf made to go, to begin the night's hunting, but Akela turned to her, putting the sleeping cubs to his back, and said:

"Shere Khan, the Sly One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me."

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived further down the Waingunga River, by Nagpore Gramin. Khan is a word that means "ruler," for so he fancied himself: and with his sharp claws and honeyed tongue, it was largely true. Ever since the white man had begun his forays into the region of the Waingunga, the Tiger had taken to calling himself Shere Augustus, and this was what his sycophants, the jackals and the _dhole_ and the other scavengers, now called him.

"He has no right!" Mother Wolf began angrily – "By the Law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He will frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I – I have to kill for many mouths, these days."

"His mother did not call him Dhurta [the Sly One] for nothing," said Akela quietly. "He speaks soft words about the Law, but gorges himself without check. Now the denizens of the Nagpore begin to unite against him, and so he has come here to cause trouble with his smooth tongue and sharp claws. He will eat all of the game out from under us, and set us at one another's throats. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!"

"I will be careful," answered Martha Mother-Wolf. "But soft! Is that him that I hear now, below in the thickets?"

The wolves listened, and from below in the valley that ran down to a little river there came a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass.

"Is it he?" Martha Mother-Wolf asked. "That is not a sound I have ever heard from any jungle creature."

"It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night," said the female wolf, from her corner of the cave. "It is Man."

Martha Mother-Wolf pricked her ears to listen and learn the sound. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.

"Man!" said she at last. "Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!"

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too – and it is true – that man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.

The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "Aaarh!" of the tiger's charge.

Then there was a howl – an untigerish howl – from Shere Khan. "He has missed," said Mother Wolf. "What is it?"

Akela ran past her, to the mouth of the cave. "Stay back," he said, twitching one ear. "Something is coming uphill." Martha Mother-Wolf backed further into the cave and crouched down beside her cubs, still piled up asleep.

The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Akela dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world – the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground.

"Man!" he snapped. "A man's cub. Look!"

Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked baby with light brown skin, no more than three winters old – as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Akela Wolf's face, and laughed.

"Is that a man's cub?" said Martha Mother Wolf. "I have never seen one. Bring it here."

A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Akela's jaws closed right on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs. The baby pushed his way among the cubs to get close to Martha's warm hide.

"How little! How naked, and – how bold!" she said softly. "Ahai! So this is a man's cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's cub among her children?"

"I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our Pack or in my time," said Akela. "He is altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not afraid."

Martha Mother-Wolf nuzzled at the man-cub, who laughed. "Ulf," he said.

"Ulf!" said Martha. "This must be man's talk." She pushed the baby gently with her nose. "Ulf," she said, struggling to shape her tongue to the word.

The baby patted her face and repeated solemnly: "you ulf."

Martha gently licked the tiny hand, and then the smooth round face, and answered back: "eyooo."

The baby put a finger to its own chest. "John," it declared.

There came a scratching at the cave mouth. It was the jackal – Tabaqui the dish-licker – whom the wolves of India despise, because he runs around making mischief and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from village rubbish-heaps, as well as the cast-offs of any hunter. Martha Mother-Wolf jumped to her feet.

Tabaqui leaned into the cave, sniffing, and squeaked: "My lord, my lord Augustus, it went in here!"

Akela caught Martha's eye and withdrew into the back reaches of the cave. The next moment, the moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan's great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance.

"All good greetings to you, fierce hunter," said the Tiger cordially. "I see that your young are thriving, though they are without a father." His words were somber, but his face was merry. Behind him, Tabaqui cackled, rejoicing in the mischief the Tiger had made.

"Shere Khan does us great honor," said Martha Mother-Wolf, but her eyes were very angry. "What does Shere Khan need?"

"I am here for my quarry. A man's cub went this way," Shere Khan replied. "Its parents have run off, and I have marked it for my own. Give it to me."

Martha Mother-Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and forepaws were cramped for want of room, as a man's would be if he tried to fight in a barrel. But the Tiger had Tabaqui, and also many others, who would fetch and carry for him, if he called.

"The Wolves are a free people," said Martha. "They take orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The man's cub is ours – to kill if we choose."

"Ye choose and ye do not choose," answered Shere Khan serenely. "For everything in this Jungle is mine. You will learn this in due time."

Shere Khan fell silent, and Martha Mother-Wolf heard a thin, trickling sound, accompanied by a harsh smell. A minute later, a small stream of urine came sliding down the slight incline at the cave mouth and flowed across the threshold.

Martha Mother-Wolf pulled back from the foul stream as it slid past her fore-paws, curling her lip in disgust, and the Tiger said:

"This cave is mine, though my body is too broad for me to enter it. And the man-cub is mine, as well. You will give him to me, even if you do not do it to-day."

Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness.

"The man's cub is mine, Dhurta – mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs – frog-eater – fish-killer – he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by the many deer that I have killed (I do not eat what sycophants have scavenged), back thou goest to thine own hunting grounds, most slippery beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!"

From the back of the cave, Akela looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when six wolves had fought one another for Martha's sake, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment's sake.

It was to his credit that Shere Khan did not turn tail and run, then and there, though he blinked and backed away. "A very fine speech, Mother," he said at last. "Though you will be very sorry for it some-day. This is my Jungle, and the man-cub will be mine to eat, and when I am done I will give his bones to the dish-licker to gnaw." With this, he backed out of the cave and moved silently out into the night, Tabaqui at his heels.

Martha threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Akela said to her gravely:

"Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Martha?"

"Keep him!" she gasped. "He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already. And that sly butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little honey badger. John, you call yourself: so shall we call you also, though you will be a Wolf as well as a man. The time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee."

Akela drew forward again to look at the man-cub, now fast asleep among his new brothers. "You will bring him before the Pack, when the time comes," he said.

"Aye," answered Martha Mother-Wolf. "When the time comes, I will."

Akela flicked his tail. "Tonight, I will bring you meat."

The attendant-wolf sprang up, and together the two wolves walked out of the cave and into the moonlight.

The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which is generally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.

Martha Mother-Wolf waited till her cubs could run a little, and then on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and John to the Council Rock – a hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for two years now. He had fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs of men.

There was very little talking at the Rock. The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight to be sure that he had not been overlooked. Akela from his rock would cry: "Ye know the Law – ye know the Law. Look well, O Wolves!" And the anxious mothers would take up the call:

"Look – look well, O Wolves!"

At last the time came, and Martha Mother-Wolf's neck bristles lifted as she pushed "John the man-cub," as they called him, into the center, where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.

A few Wolves came forward to sniff at John, but from the fringes of the group there came dark mutterings: "What has a man-cub to do with us? Shere Khan has spoken of a man-cub that is his rightful prey that was stolen. Who are we, that another hunter's prey should join our Pack?"

Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the monotonous cry: "Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free People? Look well!"

There came more growls from among the Pack, and then a young wolf in his fourth year walked forward and flung a question to Akela: "What have the Free People to do with a man's cub?" Now, the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother.

"Who speaks for this cub?" said Akela. "Among the Free People who speaks?" There was no answer and Martha Mother-Wolf got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting.

Then spoke the only other creature who is allowed a voice at the Pack Council – the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey. This had not been the name his mother gave him, but it was his name among the Wolves, for this reason: the Waingunga River begins in the hills of the Satpura range, and on its way to the jungle it flows through hard rock, and down into a great dry ravine. Here is where the Bear would take the wolf-cubs for their earliest lessons. He would lay himself down along the edge of the steep path down to the water, so that the young cubs might run without fear of falling. Hathi the Wild Elephant, whose father had been among white men and seen their dwelling-places, had laughed at the Bear when he saw this, and called him Balustrade. This became his name among the Free People, and their cubs called him Baloo.

Baloo now rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.

"The man's cub – the man's cub?" he said. "I speak for the man's cub. There is no harm in a man's cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him."

"We need yet another," said Akela. "Balustrade has spoken, and he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo?"

A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. The Panther's name was Bagheera in his own tongue. His fur was short and sleek and fit him closely, so the Free People called him Sherlock, which means short-hair. Everybody knew Sherlock, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as rich as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.

"O Akela, and ye the Free People," he purred, "I have no right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price. Am I right?"

"Good! Good!" said the young wolves, who are always hungry. "Listen to Sherlock. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law."

"Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave."

"Speak then," cried twenty voices.

"To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. The Bear has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo's word I will add my price, if ye will accept the man's cub according to the Law: the answer to a mystery that has long plagued you. Is it difficult?"

Several wolves, who had believed that Sherlock meant to bring them a fresh kill as the price for the man-cub, growled in discontent. But Akela said only: "Speak, Sherlock, and tell us of this mystery."

The Panther flicked his tail. "You all recall, many months ago, when Fao's red-furred cub vanished, and no-one knew whether he was killed, or hunted by some other creature, or simply lost his way in the Jungle."

The wolves fell silent. Baloo bowed his head in grief, for he remembered Little Redfur.

Fao now leapt onto to a hump of rock, from which he might be heard, and said:

"This is no mystery. It was the vultures who took him. I know this because I followed his trail to the stony hollow by the dead trees where they gather."

"It was the vultures in the end, yes," said the Panther softly. "But first, it was murder."

Many voices cried out at this. "Murder? It is not possible. He is lying!" But Sherlock pressed on: "One of your wolves killed him, and carried him to the hollow that she might not be discovered."

"This is heavy news you bring us, Sherlock," said Akela.

"Yet it is the truth," answered the Panther. "It is the price we agreed upon." He turned to gaze out over the crowd of Wolves. "Will you accept this price for the man-cub?" he cried.

There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: "What matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can a naked man-cub do us? Let him run with the Pack. Let him be accepted. We must know who the murderer is."

Akela rose to his feet. "Tell us what you know, Sherlock. We will accept the man-cub into the Pack and punish the murderer."

The Panther flicked his tail. "You may wish otherwise, once you have heard the full tale, for the killer has had no joy from her deed."

"But who is it?" cried Fao. "I will tear out her throat myself."

Sherlock stared at the angry wolf. "It was your mate," he said softly. "Your cubs were playing together, and the play became very rough. She cuffed Redfur to the ground to spare his brother a beating, and his head struck a rock. She feared for the welfare of her other cubs if the truth were known and she were killed."

The wolves all looked from Akela to Fao. None were looking at Baloo the Bear when he spoke again, saying:

"It is not mine to decide, O Wolves. But the Law does not require you to kill, and the grief of the mother is surely great."

"The grief of all is great," answered Akela, "but none more than the mother. She will live." He turned now to Sherlock and said: "you have paid the price." Akela gave a deep bay, crying: "Look well – look well, O Wolves!"

John was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. At last they all went down the hill, and only Akela, Sherlock, Baloo, and John's own wolves were left.

"It was well done," said Akela. "Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be a help in time."

"Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the Pack forever," said Sherlock.

Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up – to be killed in his turn.

"Take him away," he said to Martha Mother-Wolf, "and train him as befits one of the Free People."

And that is how John was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the price of a mystery solved and on Baloo's good word.


	2. Two Meetings in the Jungle

When Shere Khan learned that John had been accepted as a member of the Pack, he became very angry, though he was very careful to hide it. It was time for him to shift his hunting-grounds again, back to the valley of the Waingunga, and two days after the Pack Council, he set off eastward. But on the day that he went, it chanced that he crossed paths with Sherlock the Black Panther.

"Ah, Bagheera," said Shere Khan. "I hear thou hast spending much time among the Free People."

"That is hardly news, Shere Khan," answered Sherlock. "It is often thus."

"But not so often, I think, that you buy yourself a man-cub for the Wolves to keep and raise."

Sherlock was silent then, for he did not know how much Shere Khan knew.

"What will it be like for you, I wonder," continued the Tiger, pacing closer to Sherlock now, "to have a pet, and to watch him grow, until the day he wanders beyond the Pack's territory, and I devour him?"

"You must look more closely, Shere Khan," said Sherlock, who was trying not to become angry. "He is not a pet. He is a jungle creature now – and soon, when he is older, he will be my friend."

"We will see, Bagheera," Shere Khan answered. "Many respect you in the Jungle, but you have very few friends." He blinked slowly at the Panther. "Perhaps none at all."

Sherlock only lashed his tail and stalked away, for his courtesy was worn through. And for many months after that, nobody in the Seeonee hills saw or heard of Shere Khan, though Sherlock did not forget him, and was afraid for John.

Now you must be content to skip nine or ten whole years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that John led among the wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves almost before he was a child. And Martha Mother-Wolf and Baloo the bear taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man. When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleep again. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that he learned how to do from Sherlock, for the Panther had become his dearest friend. Sherlock would lie out on a branch and call, "Come along, Little Brother," and at first John would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape.

He took his place at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun. At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats. He would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because Sherlock showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him that it was a trap.

He loved better than anything else to go with Sherlock into the dark warm heart of the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how the Panther did his killing. Sherlock killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did John – but they hunted only for food, and not for pleasure, for this is also a rule of the jungle.

And John grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.

Martha Mother-Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature to be trusted, and that some-day he must kill Shere Khan. But though a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, John forgot it because he was only a boy – though he would have called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue. For he had long ago forgotten the words he had learned in his father's house when he was a tiny child, all except his own name.

Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela grew older and feebler the sly tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolves of the Pack, who followed him for scraps and called him Augustus, a thing Akela would never have allowed if he had had the authority to stop it. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man's cub. "They tell me," Shere Khan would say, "that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes." And the young wolves would growl and bristle.

Akela, though he grew weaker, had eyes and ears everywhere, and knew something of this. He was prudent as well as fierce, and he had kept his position by thinking ahead to the next season where many wolves would think only of their next meal – so although he was old, few wished to challenge him. Akela knew, as Baloo and Martha Mother-Wolf knew, that sooner or later Shere Khan would try to kill the man-cub whom he had claimed and been forced to relinquish. But John would not heed their warnings to be careful, but would instead wander through the jungle all day with Sherlock. When it was rumored that Shere Khan would be shifting his hunting grounds back to the Seeonee hills, Akela knew it was time for him to talk to John himself.

One fine morning, when Sherlock was still asleep and John was out walking alone, he heard a strange chattering from among a clump of bamboo. He thought it was a bird's call that he had not been taught. "Silly old Baloo!" he said to himself. "He said he had taught me about every bird in the jungle, but here is one he has forgotten. I will go see what it is." So he followed the sound. But when he reached the bamboo, there was nothing there, and he heard the same chattering call about a hundred yards away, in a scattering of tussocks and rocks. But the bird was not there either, and now John heard that same noise behind a great boulder. "This is a very clever bird!" thought John. "Perhaps Baloo does not know about it at all." And in this way, John was led a great way away, into a part of the jungle that he did not know well.

At last John came upon a narrow, gloomy ravine. It was not a place he had seen before, and he began to think that perhaps he should go back, when a voice came from deep within the ravine, saying:

"John, come inside."

John wanted to run, but instead he stood still.

"Man-cub," the same voice repeated. "You are by yourself, in a part of the jungle you do not know. There is nowhere for you to run. Come into the ravine." And because it was true, John straightened his back and walked forward into the ravine.

The ravine was dark and narrow, but there was a shape moving in the back. John came closer and saw the great grey Lone Wolf Akela stretched out on a rock.

"Why am I here?" John asked. He had seen Akela many times at Pack Council, but had not often spoken to him directly, because John was so often among his Wolf-brothers, or with Sherlock. And of course John did not remember how Akela would come to Martha Mother-Wolf's cave when he was very small, and watch over him while she hunted.

"We are here so that none will overhear while we talk," said Akela. John did not much like this answer, but Akela continued:

"What is your relationship with Sherlock the Black Panther?"

"He is my friend," John said.

"Do you trust him?"

"Why are you asking?" said John rudely. "It is not your business."

"You do not trust many others," said Akela. "And this is wise, for Man has many enemies in the jungle, and even the man-cub who runs with the Wolves and knows the call of many creatures has few friends. Shere Khan has sworn to kill you, and claims that it is within the Law for him to do so. There are some in the jungle who are swayed by his smooth tongue, even though you are a part of the Pack."

"May I leave?" said John.

"Is it possible," Akela continued, as if he were not listening, "that you, who alone face this danger, have chosen to put your greatest trust not in a member of the Free People, but in Sherlock?"

"My friends do not concern you," said John, who was becoming even angrier.

"Man-cub," said Akela, very gravely, "you are young, and the Free People wish to protect you. Balustrade, too, wishes this. But when you walk with Sherlock, you will see the jungle in all its darkness. Is this really what you wish?"

"Of course it is what I wish," John answered. "Why do you care?"

"Then I will not stop you," Akela continued.

"Good," John said, and turned to go. Akela did not move, but called after him:

"But know, John, that when you choose Sherlock over one of your brothers in the Pack, you are also choosing sides in a larger battle."

"Very well," John called back, as he walked out among the trees. "I have chosen."

"Yes, you have," said Akela to himself, as he watched John walk away.


	3. A Scandal in the Seeonee, Part I

All that is told here happened some time before John confronted Shere Khan the tiger, which is a story for another time. It was in the days when Balustrade was teaching him the Law of the Jungle, which had begun when John was very small. The big, affable brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil, for the young wolves will learn only as much of the Law of the Jungle as applies to their own pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they can repeat the Hunting Verse that binds so many of the jungle creatures in brotherhood – "Feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds; and sharp white teeth, all these things are the marks of our brothers, except Tabaqui the Jackal and the hyaena whom we hate." But John, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this, for Bagheera the Black Panther (whom the Wolves called Sherlock) insisted upon it, and Balustrade was happy to oblige. Sometimes Sherlock would come lounging through the jungle to see how his friend was getting on, and would lie with his head against a tree while John recited the day's lesson to Balustrade.

John could climb almost as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well as he could run. So Baloo, the Teacher of the Law, taught him the Wood and Water Laws: how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty feet above ground; what to say to Mang the Bat when he disturbed him in the branches at midday; and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools before he splashed down among them. Then, too, John was taught the Strangers' Hunting Call, which must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle-People hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, "Give me leave to hunt here because I am hungry." And the answer is, "Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure."

All this will show you how much John had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired of saying the same thing over a hundred times. John far preferred the lessons he had with Sherlock. They were not lessons exactly; but when the panther sensed that John was growing dull of mind from repeating the Laws and verses that Baloo had drummed into him that day, he would spring up and say:

"The movement of the wind through the trees, and the way it causes the game to stir, is far better learned through observation. Come along, John."

And then John would jump up, laughing and calling out praises to Sherlock, and boy and panther would gallop off into the jungle together, leaving Baloo alone to mutter to the empty clearing– "It is not my division of the labor, all this running about. But still, he must learn the Law." And so he remonstrated with Sherlock one day, saying:

"You cannot always pull the man-cub away from his lessons, Bagheera."

"It is not I who pulls him away," Sherlock retorted. "He pulls himself away, when you drive him off with your long talk."

"Better he should suffer through dullness now – surely you agree! – than that he should come to harm through ignorance," Baloo answered very earnestly. "I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle."

"Well, that is something," Sherlock allowed. "For a man-cub, anyhow. But what are those Master Words? I myself am more likely to give help than to ask it" – Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it – "but still I should like to know."

"I will call John and he shall say them – if he will. Come, Little honey badger!"

"My head is filled with dull, heavy stones," said a sullen little voice over their heads, and John slid down a tree trunk very angry and indignant, adding as he reached the ground: "I come for Sherlock and not for thee, fat old Baloo!"

"That is all one to me," said Baloo, though he was hurt and grieved. "Tell your friend Sherlock, then, the Master Words of the Jungle that I have taught thee this day."

"Master Words for which people?" said John, delighted to show off. "The jungle has many tongues. I know them all."

"A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People, then – great scholar."

"We be of one blood, ye and I," said John, giving the words the Bear accent which all the Hunting People use – for in the jungle, all things are measured in their proximity to bears.

"Good. Now for the birds."

John repeated, with the Kite's whistle at the end of the sentence.

"Now for the Snake-People," said Sherlock.

The answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and John kicked up his feet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped on to Sherlock's back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on the glossy flanks and making the worst faces he could think of at Baloo.

"There – there! That was worth a little boredom," said the brown bear tenderly. "Some day thou wilt remember me." Then he turned aside to Sherlock. "Was it not well done?"

"I am glad some small good has come of John's many hours with you," replied Sherlock, who did not like to say that John's time was well-spent with anyone but him.

"So now, neither beast, nor bird, nor snake will hurt him, and no one then is to be feared," Baloo declared, patting his big furry stomach with pride.

"Except his own tribe," said Sherlock, under his breath; and then aloud to John, "Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all this dancing up and down?"

John had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at Sherlock's shoulder fur and kicking hard. "Let us go, Sherlock, let us go!" he shouted. "I am tired of Baloo's teaching. I want to have more adventures with you. will have no more of the Law. It is worthless."

"What is this new folly?" said Sherlock, and his voice was very cold.

"The Law of the Jungle is only a silly pastime. I will not waste my time on it any longer."

"Whoof!" Baloo's big paw scooped John off Sherlock's back, and as the boy lay between the big fore-paws he could see the Bear was angry.

"John," said Baloo, "thou hast been talking with the _Bandar-log_ – the Monkey People."

John looked at Sherlock to see if the Panther was angry too, and Sherlock's eyes were as hard as jade stones.

"Thou hast been with the Monkey People – the gray apes – the people without a law – the eaters of everything. That is great shame."

"They came to visit me one day when I was by myself," said John, "because Sherlock had gone off by himself. They talked to me, and I wasn't lonely any more."

"The attention of the Monkey People!" Sherlock snorted. "It is a worthless prize."

"Then why do you go among them?" said John.

"Yes, it is a good question," said Baloo, who knew of Sherlock's explorations and did not approve.

"Oh," said the panther carelessly. "It is not like that. Sometimes I observe them to make a study of their ways. I do not think we can chase them out of the Jungle entirely, but perhaps if we learn the patterns of how they behave, we can drive them to another district so that they will leave us alone."

"It does not do to pay them any attention," said Baloo gravely. "They do not deserve our notice, and it is a bad thing for them to notice you, as well. And see, you teach the man-cub that he may talk to them."

John struggled in his place between Baloo's paws. "But why may I not talk to them? Why have I never been taken among the Monkey People? They stand on their feet as I do. They have hands like mine. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I will play with them again. Sherlock, will you take me?"

"Listen, man-cub," said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle – except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees. They have no law. They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard me speak of the _Bandar-log_ till today?"

"No," said John in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo had finished.

"The Jungle-People put them out of their mouths and out of their minds. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads."

He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.

"The Monkey-People are forbidden," said Baloo, "forbidden to the Jungle-People. Remember."

"Forbidden," repeated Sherlock, "and I will forbear to go among them myself hereafter. It is, perhaps, not good for you to think of them. Put them out of your minds."

John agreed, and was very ashamed, and his friends saw that he understood and spoke no more of his mischief, for no great harm had come of it. John tried to forget the nonsense that the _Bandar-log_ had said to him, their empty comforts and silly talk of their own greatness. But he did not forget what he had seen them do to his friends, how the monkey people picked up objects with their clever hands – nuts and branches and stones – and flung them like weapons. There is no law in the jungle that talks of throwing, for the _Bandar-log_ live outside the Law, and no other jungle creature is capable of picking up an object to throw. But John practiced, in secret, until he could hurl a stone or a pebble very fast and very hard, and always hit his mark.

Now what Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other's path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People could see them. None of the beasts would pay them any mind, and that was why they were so pleased that John had played with them, and when they heard how angry Baloo and Bagheera had been.

Most of them never meant to do any more – Baloo was, for the most part, quite right when he said that the _Bandar-log_ never mean anything at all. But there was among the monkeys one that was exceptionally clever, though he was also quite wild. He was called Jayim, and he had come over the hills from the south, from the table-lands that lay closer to the mountains. None of the monkeys knew why Jayim had come from the Inner Tablelands, and if one of them had known he would promptly have forgotten it, for the monkey people do not remember any thing from one day to the next. But Jayim was cleverer than the other _Bandar-log_ , and soon had set himself up as a sort of a king, telling the monkeys that if they listened to him they would soon have the respect of all the Jungle-People, and would build themselves great cities such as men lived in. The monkeys liked this idea very much, and though they could never work at it for long enough to build anything, they told one another that their city would be finished any day, and that their leader made them the wisest people in the jungle – so wise that soon everyone else would notice and envy them.

Jayim had watched John, and he told all the others that John would be a useful person to keep in the tribe, because he had hands as they did, and so belonged with them. The Monkey-People, watching in the trees, considered his play most wonderful, and so they agreed that they must take him to live among them.

Jayim had watched Sherlock, as well, and had noticed the panther observing the _Bandar-log_ and their ways – and he watched too as Sherlock and John went together through the jungle, leaping through tree-tops or stalking game. He saw that Sherlock was very clever – cleverest of all the Jungle-People – and he thought (for he was very cunning) that if he could make the _Bandar-log_ take John away from Sherlock, the panther would notice him, and understand that Jayim was the best of all the monkeys. For it did not matter so much, to be the king of a people who could not set themselves to any task, or remember a rule from one day to the next; Jayim wished for the other people of the Jungle to know that he was great and clever, and master among the Monkey People. But he did not tell this to them, only told them that their king required them to steal the man-cub, and that if they did this, the monkeys would become the best people in the Jungle.

The day that this took place, John and Sherlock had stayed with Baloo in his shady clearing, for Sherlock had stumbled into a hornets' nest and was napping while his nose returned to its usual condition. The bear had lain down nearby, and John curled up on the ground between them. The next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and arms – hard, strong, little hands – and then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and Sherlock bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. The _Bandar-log_ howled with triumph and scuffled away to the upper branches where Sherlock dared not follow, shouting: "He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. All the Jungle-People admire us for our skill and our cunning."

Then they began their flight; and the flight of the Monkey-People through tree-land is one of the things nobody can describe. They have their regular roads and crossroads, up hills and down hills, all laid out from fifty to seventy or a hundred feet above ground, and by these they can travel even at night if necessary. Two of the strongest monkeys caught John under the arms and swung off with him through the treetops, twenty feet at a bound. Had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy's weight held them back.

Sick and giddy as John was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth. His escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the thinnest topmost branches crackle and bend under them, and then with a cough and a whoop would fling themselves into the air outward and downward, and bring up, hanging by their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree. Sometimes he could see for miles and miles across the still green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost down to earth again. So, bounding and crashing and whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of _Bandar-log_ swept along the tree-roads with John their prisoner.

For a time he was afraid of being dropped. Then he grew angry but knew better than to struggle, and then he began to think. The first thing was to send back word to Baloo and Sherlock, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look down, for he could only see the topsides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Wiggi the Kite balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the jungle waiting for things to die. Wiggi saw that the monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a few hundred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He whistled with surprise when he saw John being dragged up to a treetop and heard him give the Kite call for – "We be of one blood, thou and I." The waves of the branches closed over the boy, but Wiggi balanced away to the next tree in time to see the little brown face come up again. "Mark my trail!" John shouted. "Tell Baloo of the Seeonee Pack and Bagheera the Black Panther, who is Sherlock of the Council Rock."

"In whose name, Brother?" Wiggi had never seen John before, though of course he had heard of him.

"John, the man-cub! Mark my tra-il!"

The last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air, but Wiggi nodded and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of dust, and there he hung, watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the treetops as John's escort whirled along.

"They never go far," he said with a chuckle. "They never do what they set out to do. Always pecking at new things are the _Bandar-log_. This time, if I have any eye-sight, they have pecked down trouble for themselves, for Baloo is no fledgling and Bagheera can, as I know, kill more than goats."

So he rocked on his wings, his feet gathered up under him, and waited.

Meantime, Baloo and Sherlock were furious with rage and grief. Sherlock climbed as he had never climbed before, but the thin branches broke beneath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark.

"Why didst thou not protect the man-cub?" he roared to poor Baloo, who had set off at a clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the monkeys. "What was the use of thy claws, and of all thy teaching, if it did not keep him safe?"

"Haste! O haste! We – we may catch them yet!" Baloo panted.

"At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow. Teacher of the Law – droner – a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee open. Sit still and think! Make a plan. This is no time for chasing. They may drop him if we follow too close."

"Arrula! Whoo! They may have dropped him already, being tired of carrying him. Who can trust the _Bandar-log_? Put dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat! Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyaena, for I am most miserable of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O John, John! Why did I not warn thee against the Monkey-Folk instead of filling thy head with stories? Now perhaps I may have driven the old lessons out of his mind, and he will be alone in the jungle without the Master Words."

Baloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro, moaning.

"Balustrade, calm yourself and _think_ ," Sherlock impatiently. "He gave me all the Words correctly, only a little time ago. We can still find him if we try. Meantime, this carrying-on helps nobody. What would the jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki the Porcupine, and howled?"

"What do I care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead by now."

"Unless and until they drop him from the branches in sport, or kill him out of idleness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and well taught, and above all he has the eyes that make the Jungle-People afraid. But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the _Bandar-log_ , and they, because they live in trees, have no fear of any of our people." Sherlock licked one forepaw thoughtfully.

"Fool that I am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that I am," said Baloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk, "it is true what Hathi the Wild Elephant says: `To each his own fear'; and they, the _Bandar-log_ , fear Shanti the Rock Snake. She can climb as well as they can. She steals the young monkeys in the night. The whisper of her name makes their wicked tails cold. Let us go to Shanti."

"The Snake!" exclaimed Sherlock. There are many snakes in the jungle, of course, but it was only Shanti who was called this, for everyone in the jungle knew her, and most all of them feared her at least a little. "What will she do for us? She is not of our tribe, being footless – and with most bewitching eyes," said Sherlock.

"She is very curious and very cunning. Above all, she is always hungry," said Baloo hopefully. "Promise her many goats."

"Shanti hunts on her own, and sleeps for a full month after she has once eaten. She may be asleep now, and even were she awake, what if she will not help us? She may want a favor in return." Sherlock, who did not know much about Shanti, was naturally suspicious.

"Then in that case, thou and I together, old hunter, might make her see reason."

Sherlock curled his lips back from his great white teeth. "I do not like this, Balustrade. It will be a scandal in all the district if it is known that we have gone to Shanti for help. Surely we can manage on our own."

"Tell me, Bagheera," returned the old bear, "is there anything you would not do for John?"

Sherlock was silent, for his answer was clear. Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the Panther, and they went off to look for Shanti the Rock Python.


	4. A Scandal in the Seeonee, Part II

Balustrade and Sherlock found Shanti the Rock Python stretched out on a warm ledge in the afternoon sun, admiring her beautiful new coat, for she had been in retirement for the last ten days changing her skin, and now she was very splendid, twisting her long body into fantastic knots and curves, and licking her lips as he thought of her dinner to come.

"She has not eaten," said Balustrade, with a grunt of relief, as soon as he saw the beautiful poison-green jacket. "Be careful, Bagheera! She is always a little blind after he has changed his skin, and very quick to strike."

Shanti was not a poison snake – in fact she rather despised the poison snakes as cowards – but her strength lay in her embrace, and when she had once lapped her sinuous coils round anybody there was no more to be said. "Good hunting!" cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches. Shanti cocked her head at the sound of her name and then curled toward the newcomers, gracious but guarded.

"Good hunting for us all," she answered. "Oho, Balustrade, what dost thou do here? Good hunting, Bagheera. One of us at least needs food. Is there any news of game afoot? A young buck? Or perhaps" – her voice stretched out as long as her body – "even a doe? I am as empty as a dried well."

"There is hunting to be done," said Baloo. He knew that you must let Shanti decide how the talking will go.

"I will be hunting to-night as well," said Shanti, "Though my hunt is a different sort of game: a long wait for the right sort of prey to cross my path, and then a calculated dance." She flicked her tongue. "I do take pleasure in the pursuit, though less so when my hunger yawns inside me, as it does now."

"You may join us, if you like," said Sherlock carelessly, for he knew it was dangerous for the Snake to know that they sought her help.

"I do not know if I like or not," answered she. "What are you hunting to-night?"

"It – it is the _Bandar-log_ that we follow," said Baloo, but the words stuck in his throat, for that was the first time in his memory that one of the Jungle-People had owned to being interested in the doings of the monkeys.

"Is it, now." Shanti's voice became liquid. "And why do two such great hunters pursue a worthless pack of jungle scum?"

"Do you know," interjected Sherlock, "we were on their trail earlier, and we heard them speaking of you. Calling you most evil names, if I recall. Footless, yellow earth-worm, I believe it was," said the panther under his whiskers, as though he were trying to remember.

"Yes," said Baloo, catching on. "Evil, most terrible names. Very foul names."

"They shouted something of that kind at us as well, once they heard us. They will say anything – even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they are indeed shameless, these _Bandar-log_ ) – because thou art afraid of the he-goat's horns," Sherlock went on sweetly. "Did you not hear of it? All the jungle is talking."

Now a snake, especially a great python like Shanti, very seldom cares what the Jungle-People say – the snakes are an ancient and wary people, and they know that many creatures speak carelessly of snakes as a way to bury their own fear. But it is one thing for a creature to say such a thing to himself, or a few others, and quite another for all the jungle to be talking of it – at least for a person like Shanti, who cared so much for her own reputation (as Sherlock had seen.) Baloo and Sherlock could see the big swallowing muscles on either side of Shanti's throat ripple before her anger came under control.

"Beyond doubt then," the Snake said courteously, when she could again speak calmly, "it is no small thing that takes two such hunters – leaders in their own jungle I am certain – on the trail of the Bandar-log."

"Indeed," Balustrade began, "I am no more than the old and sometimes very foolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf-cubs, and Bagheera here – "

"Is Bagheera," said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut with a snap, for he did not believe in being humble. "The trouble is this, Shanti. Those nut-stealers and pickers of palm leaves have stolen away our man-cub of whom thou hast perhaps heard."

"I had indeed heard," the Snake answered, "for I hear many things..."

"Of course, everybody knows this of you," put in Sherlock.

"But I did not know whether to believe it. It is a strange tale."

"But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was," said Baloo. "The best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs – my own pupil, who shall make the name of Balustrade famous through all the jungle."

"Do not make him out for what he is not," snapped Sherlock, who feared that Shanti would drive a very hard bargain for such a prize. "He is only a hairless cub who cannot hunt on his own."

Shanti stared at Sherlock silently until he was driven to speak again, and said:

"And I – we – love him, Shanti."

"Please," said Baloo. "Our man-cub is in the hands of the _Bandar-log_ now, and we know that of all the Jungle-People they fear Shanti alone."

"They have good reason for it," said Shanti. "But now we come to the question: what will you give me in return?"

"In return?" asked Baloo.

The Snake stared back at him. "You said 'please' – you are asking me for a favor. I would like something in return." Her tongue flicked in what seemed to be amusement. "Surely a teacher of the Law understands."

"We can help speed your hunt," said Sherlock.

"Maybe," answered the Snake, "and maybe not. It is hard to account for the luck of the hunt."

"Well then," said Sherlock, who was now quite determined that Shanti should aid them in their search, "we will help you punish the _Bandar-log_ for their chattering foolishness, and show the jungle what befalls those who speak ill of Shanti."

"Ssssss." Shanti hissed as she considered. "Yes, that is good. They called me – `yellow fish' was it not?"

"Worm – worm – earth-worm," said Sherlock, "as well as other things which I cannot now say for shame."

"Well," said the Snake, "we must remind them to speak well of their mistress. Help their wandering memories. Now, whither went they with the cub?"

"The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe," said Baloo. "We had thought that thou wouldst know, Shanti."

"I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do not hunt the _Bandar-log_ , or frogs – or green scum on a water-hole, for that matter."

Suddenly, there came a call: "Up, Up! Up, Up! Hillo! Illo! Illo, look up, Bagheera the panther! Look up, Balustrade of the Seeonee Wolf Pack!"

Baloo and Sherlock looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was Wiggi the Kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his wings. It was near Wiggi's bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle looking for the Bear or the Panther and had missed them in the thick foliage.

"What? What is it?" said Sherlock impatiently.

"I have seen John among the _Bandar-log_. He bade me tell you. I watched. The _Bandar-log_ have taken him beyond the river to the monkey city – to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a night, or ten nights, or an hour. I have told the bats to watch through the dark time. That is my message. Good hunting, all you below!"

"Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Wiggi," cried Sherlock. "For that was half-way clever of you."

"It is nothing. It is nothing," said Wiggi, who knew enough of Bagheera to know that this was high praise. "The boy held the Master Word. I could have done no less. Good hunting!" And Wiggi circled up again to his roost.

"He has not forgotten to use his tongue," said Baloo with a chuckle of pride. "To think of one so young remembering the Master Word for the birds too while he was being pulled across trees!"

"It was most firmly drummed into him," said Sherlock. "But I am proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs."

They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle People ever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes do not. Besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it except in times of drought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water.

"It is half a night's journey – at full speed," said Sherlock, and Baloo looked very serious. "I will go as fast as I can," the bear said anxiously.

"We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on the quick-foot – Shanti and I. If you will come," he said, turning to the Snake.

"Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four," said Shanti shortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, and so they left him to come on later, while Sherlock hurried forward, at the quick panther-canter. Shanti said nothing, but, strive as Sherlock might, the huge Rock-python held level with him. When they came to a hill stream, Sherlock gained, because he bounded across while Shanti swam, her head and two feet of her neck clearing the water, but on level ground Shanti made up the distance.

"By my own love of the man-cub," said Sherlock, near out of breath and guarding his thoughts less than usual, "thou art no slow goer!"

"I am hungry," said Shanti. "Besides, they called me earth-crawler."

"Worm – earth-worm, and yellow to boot."

"All one. Let us go on," and Shanti seemed to pour herself along the ground, finding the shortest road with her steady eyes, and keeping to it. And twilight fell as they went.

In the Cold Lairs, the monkeys who had taken John were not thinking of John's friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost City, and were very much pleased with themselves for the time. John had never seen a men's city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little hill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led up to the ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps.

The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest, but they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would play up and down the terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout: "There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the _Bandar-log_." Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice them.

Once they had arrived with John, the monkeys joined hands and danced in a circle, singing "we have taken the man-cub! He will live with us forever! Truly we are the wisest and best of all the Jungle-People." John did not understand this – for he knew very little of the _Bandar-log_ , and nothing at all of Jayim or his designs – but he saw that the monkeys did not intend to let him leave. But John did not lose hope yet. "Perhaps they will change their minds, or forget about me," he thought to himself, "for they seem very changeable." And so he looked about himself, to see what kind of place he was now in.

He began to wander the city, even though he was tired and sore, for he was also hungry and curious. And indeed the city was quite wonderful, even in its ruined state. A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and green, and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king's elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides.

As John explored, he came upon groups of monkeys playing up and down the halls, or scuffling and shouting. "I wish to eat," he told them, when he got their attention. "I am a stranger to this part of the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here."

Each time he asked this, the monkeys would bound away to bring him nuts or wild pawpaws. But soon they would fall to fighting among themselves, and it was too much trouble for them to return with what was left of the food. Soon John was sore and angry as well as hungry, and went in search of his own food.

He roamed through the empty city giving the Strangers' Hunting Call from time to time, but no one answered him. He came upon rows of orange and fig trees, growing in and about an old garden. But he had never seen such plants before, and without Baloo to guide him, he was unsure whether they were good to eat or whether they would make him sick. At the bottom of the walk there was a great, smooth-sided palm-tree, and up at the top John could see a cluster of nuts, but John could not climb that high on his own, and Sherlock was not there to climb the tree and fetch them for him. John felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed. "All that Baloo has said about the _Bandar-log_ is true," he thought. "They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders – nothing but foolish words and little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return to my own jungle. Sherlock will surely be angry with me, but that is better than chasing silly rose leaves with the _Bandar-log_."

After a great deal of wandering and turning about, John found his way to a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half-full of rain water, at the far edge of the city. There was a ruined summer-house of white marble in the center of the terrace, built for queens dead a hundred years ago. The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the underground passage from the palace by which the queens used to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble tracery – beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the ground like black velvet embroidery.

Here it was quieter, for the monkeys did not like to drink the water at night, for having a horror of the water-snakes that dwelt in the basins they preferred to drink only by daylight. John was still hungry, but after taking a long drink from the reservoir, he sat down on the wide sandstone ledge of the largest reservoir and listened to the noises of the deserted city, thinking about how he might get away from the monkeys.

"I knew you would find your way here," said a voice. John started to his feet and saw a single monkey coming toward him along the reservoir's edge. It was difficult to tell by moonlight, bright though it was, but John thought this was a monkey he had not seen before.

"I did not come on purpose," said John warily. "I was taken and brought here against my will, and I am a stranger to this part of the jungle. Give me leave to hunt here."

"I know well how you came here, man-cub," said the Monkey, "for it was I who caused it to be done."

John became angry at this. "Who are you?" he asked. "You must send me back!"

"I am Jayim, the King of the _Bandar-log_ , and I must do no such thing," came the reply.  
If John had been a wolf instead of a man-cub, he would not have tried to dispute with a monkey, but John said:

"The _Bandar-log_ have no leader. Baloo my teacher told me."

Jayim chattered loudly, and John could not tell whether he was angry or only laughing. "Your teacher is behind the times, for I am the leader now. All the Monkey People do as I say, and very soon, all the Jungle-People will know of it, and tremble in fear before the cleverest and most powerful of the _Bandar-log_."

John now began to feel a little afraid of Jayim, and wished that he had not shouted. "It may be so," he answered. "We will talk about it again to-morrow, after I sleep, for I am tired." He saw, in the sky above, that a great cloud was about to pass in front of the moon, and he thought that if Jayim would only go away and leave him alone, he might find a way to escape from the city and return to his own part of the jungle. But Jayim did not leave – instead, he came up and took John's hands in his own, and swung him round in a mad violent dance, and crowed:

"I see your eyes on that cloud, o man-cub! Are you afraid of the dark? Do not fear, I will not leave you alone." He split his wide mouth open with chattering laughter as he whirled John faster and faster. "We will stay here and dance together, you and I, until your friends arrive."

Those friends were also watching the very same cloud from a ruined ditch below the city wall, for Sherlock and Shanti, knowing well how dangerous the Monkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to run any risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle care for those odds.

"I will go around to the west wall," Shanti whispered, "and come down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. They will not throw themselves upon my back in their hundreds, but – "

"I know it," said Sherlock. "Would that Baloo were here, but we must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go to the terrace by the reservoirs. The monkeys do not like the water-snakes that live there (though they fear them less than you!) and will not gather there-abouts as they do in the palace.

"Good hunting," said Shanti grimly, and glided away to the west wall. That happened to be the least ruined of any, and the Snake was delayed awhile before she could find a way up the stones. Sherlock made one leap after another, jumping from fallen stone to ruined parapet, and landed lightly on the terrace. Looking down, he saw a strange figure he could not make out clearly, and slipped down toward the reservoir for a better look, keeping to the shadows.

As Sherlock drew closer, he saw that the strange figure was in fact two. John had long ago grown tired, and now Jayim stood with his long, hairy arms wrapped around John's waist, holding him up as they swayed slowly back and forth together.

"Look, Bagheera," the monkey called out, "we are dancing! What a grand time we are having, your man-cub and I!" He chattered suddenly, harsh and very loud, and when he spoke again his voice was very cold. "Although I think perhaps he is my man-cub, now."

Sherlock realized then that Jayim knew he was there, and there was no longer any reason to try to conceal himself, and he walked out onto the wide sandstone ledge of the reservoir.

"Oh look," said Jayim, "there you are."

"Here I am," said Sherlock. "But I do not know who you are."

"You will know me soon enough," answered Jayim.

The Panther was uncertain about what he should do next. In all of his observations of the _Bandar-log_ he had never seen or heard one who spoke as Jayim did, and he was afraid. But he did not want John to know this, so he said:

"Give me the man-cub and we shall leave together in peace. There is no need for you to be killed to-night."

"Look above you, Bagheera," said the Monkey King. Sherlock turned his eyes up toward the terrace, and to saw hundreds of _Bandar-log_ staring back down at them. Looking around, he saw that dozens more were gathered in the high trees that bordered the reservoirs, hanging from the branches. Jayim had summoned them with his loud chatter, and now they stood ready to attack at his word. John saw them too, and he looked back at Sherlock, his eyes full of fear.

"So you see," Jayim went on, "it is not I who will be killed tonight."

Sherlock stared back at Jayim, cool and steady, but underneath he was now very frightened. He did not know where Shanti was, nor Baloo, and he did not know how soon they would arrive to help. It annoyed him very much, to strike a bargain with the _Bandar-log_ (who after all did not live under the Law) but he felt he had no choice. So he said, his voice as careless as he could manage:

"Tell me what it is you want, Monkey, and I give you my word that you will have it. Only let me take the man-cub away in peace."

The Monkey King showed Sherlock all his teeth, still looking over John's shoulder. "I think I will keep him," he said. "I am not very much interested in peace."

"Run, Sherlock!" John cried out suddenly. "He means to kill you! It is too late for me – I must stay here." Jayim clapped his long-fingered hand over John's mouth, his hairy arms still tight around him, and John could say no more.

"Do not show off your foolishness," Sherlock snapped. "We leave together, and leave the vermin to their own pursuits." There was a furious hissing and shouting from the trees in response to Sherlock's speech.

"Wrong again, Bagheera," said Jayim. "The _Bandar-log_ will not be left behind any more. It is high time the rest of the jungle noticed us, and gave us a place under the Law." The clamor in the trees became still louder as all the monkeys yelled in approbation. "You will do this for us. Otherwise, you and your man-cub will both die to-night."

"Never!" snarled Sherlock.

"Very well," said Jayim, as if he did not much care. "Balustrade has a softer heart than thee; he will surely agree when he arrives, which will be soon enough." He made a clicking noise with his mouth, and dozens of monkeys sprang down and leaped upon the panther, all at once.

John watched in horror as a scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over Sherlock. Jayim let go of John and ran closer, watching with relish as Sherlock backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his enemies. For the first time since he was born, Sherlock was fighting for his life.

"I must help him," John thought. And then he called aloud: "To the tank, Sherlock. Roll to the water tanks. Roll and plunge! Get to the water!"

More monkeys were pouring down from the terrace, coming to join the fight, but Sherlock heard John's cry, and it gave him new courage. At last he struck his way clear of the latest wave of attackers. In that one brief moment he met John's eyes, and then the two of them flung themselves into the reservoir.


	5. A Scandal in the Seeonee, Part III

John and Sherlock both hit the water with a sharp smack that stung the skin of both Man-cub and Panther. John opened his eyes beneath the water, but their landing had churned up all the mud at the bottom, so the water was murky and he could not see anything beyond the tip of his own nose. Forgetting he was under water, he shouted "Sherlock!" – only to find his mouth filling with water. He choked, and pushed his head back above the surface where he could cough properly.

Treading water a few feet from the edge of the water-tank, John looked about him. The Panther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of the water, while the monkeys stood three deep on the red steps, dancing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out.

Then from the ruined wall nearest the jungle rose up the rumbling war-shout of Balustrade. The old Bear had done his best, and though his passage had been slow, he arrived ready to do his part. "Bagheera," he shouted, "I am here. I climb! I haste! Ahuwora! The stones slip under my feet! Wait my coming, O most infamous _Bandar-log_!" He panted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in a wave of monkeys, but he threw himself squarely on his haunches, and, spreading out his forepaws, hugged as many as he could hold, and then began to hit with a regular bat-bat-bat, like the flipping strokes of a paddle wheel.

It was then that Sherlock lifted up his dripping chin, and in despair gave the Snake's Call for protection – "We be of one blood, ye and I" – for he believed that Shanti had turned tail at the last minute. Even Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the edge of the terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the Black Panther asking for help, the very thing he had been so sure, only a few days before, that he would never do.

Shanti had only just worked her way over the west wall, landing with a wrench that dislodged a coping stone into the ditch. She had no intention of losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled herself once or twice, to be sure that every foot of her long body was in working order. All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the monkeys yelled in the tank round Sherlock. Then Shanti came straight, quickly, and anxious to kill. The fighting strength of a python is in the driving blow of her head backed by all the strength and weight of her body. If you can imagine a lance, or a battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind as precise as a whip living in the handle of it, you can roughly imagine what Shanti was like when she fought. A python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and Shanti was three times that and more. Her first stroke was delivered into the heart of the crowd round Balustrade. It was sent home with shut mouth in silence, and there was no need of a second. The monkeys scattered with cries of – "Shanti! It is Shanti! Run! Run!"

A full generation of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the stories their elders told them of Shanti, the night thief, who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived; of sly Shanti, who could croon a low, enchanting song until the wisest were bewitched, and walked straight into the Snake's own jaws. Shanti was everything that the monkeys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits of her power, none of them could look her in the face, and none had ever come alive out of her embrace. And so they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His fur was much thicker than Sherlock's, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. Then Shanti opened her mouth for the first time and spoke:

"Sssstay, all of you _Bandar-log_. Why do you run from me? We have much to discussss."

And the monkeys that had been fleeing along the sandstone ledge of the reservoir fell still, and monkeys on the walls and the empty houses stopped their cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the city John heard Sherlock shaking his wet sides as he came up from the tank. Then the clamor broke out again. The monkeys leaped higher up the walls. They clung around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they skipped along the battlements, while John, still treading water in the reservoir, hooted owl-fashion between his front teeth, to show his derision and contempt.

"I can do no more," Sherlock gasped. "Let us take the man-cub and go. They may attack again."

"They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!" Shanti hissed, and the city was silent once more. She turned her head, weaving on her long green neck, and flicked her tongue at Sherlock. "I could not come before, Brother, but I think I heard thee call."

"You were mistaken," Sherlock answered shortly. "Balustrade, art thou hurt?"

"I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little bearlings," said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. "Awuho! I am sore. Shanti, we owe thee, I think, our lives – Bagheera and I. And the man-cub's as well," the Bear continued, when Sherlock said nothing.

"Thank you," muttered Sherlock, so quietly the Snake could barely hear. "We are grateful."

"Hah! The gratitude of Bagheera!" said Shanti with a chuckle. "Truly he has the love of his friends, this manling. Come you out of the pool, man-cub. I promise the _Bandar-log_ will not bother you."

John was still treading water in the reservoir, for there were still many monkeys lining the edge of the pool and he could not see whether Jayim was among them. But at this word, he swam to the edge – slowly, for his arms and legs were by now very tired – and climbed up the red stone steps at the edge. Sherlock came forward to meet him, and John flung himself upon the Panther's big neck.

"Art thou hurt?" said Sherlock, quiet and desperate with alarm.

"I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have handled ye grievously, my Brother!" He drew back to look over the Panther's shoulder at Balustrade. "And Baloo as well! How ye bleed!"

"Others also," said Sherlock, licking his lips and looking at the monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.

"It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, best of students!" murmured Baloo.

"Of that we shall judge later," said Sherlock, in a dry voice that John did not at all like. "But here is Shanti to whom we owe the battle and thou owest thy life. Thank her according to our customs, John."

John turned and saw the great Python's head swaying a foot above his own.

"So this is the manling," said Shanti. "Very soft is his skin, and he is not unlike the _Bandar-log_. Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat."

"We be one blood, thou and I," John answered. "I take my life from thee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Shanti."

"All thanks, Little Brother," said Shanti, though her eyes twinkled. "And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I may follow when next he goes abroad."

"I kill nothing, – I am too little, – but I drive goats toward such as can use them. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the truth. I have some skill in these [he held out his hands], and if ever thou art in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee, to Sherlock, and to Baloo, here. Good hunting to ye all, my masters."

"Well said," growled Balustrade, for John had returned thanks very prettily. The Python dropped her head lightly for a minute on John's shoulder. "A brave heart and a courteous tongue," said she. "They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see." She flicked her tongue.

The moon was sinking behind the hills and the lines of trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged shaky fringes of things. Balustrade went down to the tank for a drink – for he always liked to drink some water after a fight – and Sherlock began to put his fur in order, as Shanti glided out into the center of the terrace and brought her jaws together with a ringing snap that drew all the monkeys' eyes upon her.

"The moon sets," she said. "Is there yet light enough to see?"

From the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-tops – "We see, O Shanti."

"Good. Begins now the dance – the Dance of the Hunger of Shanti. Sit still and watch."

She began to croon, then turned twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving her head from right to left. Then she began making loops and figures of eight with her body, and soft, oozy triangles that melted into squares and five-sided figures, and coiled mounds, never resting, never hurrying, and never stopping her low humming song. It grew darker and darker, till at last the dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but they could hear the rustle of the scales.

Balustrade and Sherlock stood still as stone, growling in their throats, their neck hair bristling, and John watched and wondered.

" _Bandar-log_ ," said the voice of Shanti at last, "can ye stir foot or hand without my order? Speak!"

"Without thy order we cannot stir foot or hand, O Shanti!"

"Good! Come all one pace nearer to me."

The lines of the monkeys swayed forward helplessly, and Baloo and Sherlock took one stiff step forward with them.

"Nearer!" hissed Shanti, and they all moved again.

John laid his hands on Baloo and Sherlock to get them away, and the two great beasts started as though they had been waked from a dream.

"Keep thy hand on my shoulder," Sherlock whispered. "Keep it there, or I must go back – must go back to Shanti. Aah!"

"It is only old Shanti making circles on the dust," said John. "Let us go." And the three slipped off through a gap in the walls to the jungle.

"Whoof!" said Baloo, when he stood under the still trees again. "Never more will I make an ally of Shanti," and he shook himself all over.

"She knows more than we," said Sherlock, trembling. "In a little time, had I stayed, I should have walked down her throat."

"Many will walk by that road before the moon rises again," said Baloo. "She will have good hunting – after her own fashion."

"But what was the meaning of it all?" said John, who was still very young, and did not know anything of a python's powers of fascination. "I saw no more than a big snake making foolish circles till the dark came."

"John," said Sherlock angrily, "speak not of the things thou dost not know. For all thy teacher's long lessons, still thou art painfully ignorant."

"I know many things!" John protested.

"Oh yes," answered Sherlock, "a single spine on a single palm-frond in a great stand of trees, such is thy learning! And thy foolishness is catching, for now Balustrade and I are likewise made fools, all for fear of losing thee. We have paid for your errors: in time which might have been spent in good hunting, in wounds, in hair – I am half plucked along my back – and last of all, in honor. For, remember, John, I, who am the Black Panther, was forced to call upon Shanti for protection, and Balustrade and I were both made stupid as little birds by the Hunger Dance."

"She will not soon forget it," said Baloo.

"Of course not," snapped Sherlock. "Indeed, this was her price the whole time – she now holds the honor of Balustrade and Bagheera tight in her coils."

"True, it is true," said John sorrowfully. "I am an evil man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me."

"It is nothing," said Baloo. "You are back with us again." But Sherlock said nothing.

They walked awhile in silence, side by side, with Baloo in the middle. Sherlock began to be sorry that he had lost his temper, and when they stopped to drink at a river, he made sure that it was he who walked in the middle. "Put thy hand on my shoulder," he said to John, for the second time that night, "for my eyes see farther than thine."

John said nothing, for he was thinking very hard, but he put his hand back on the glossy black shoulder. Only when they had gone many leagues did he say at last:

"I wonder what happened to Jayim."

"I did not see," answered Sherlock. "He was not in the crowd that attacked me."

"Do you think he was ensnared by Shanti?"

Sherlock growled deep in his throat. "That one? It is not likely. They understand each other too well, I think."

"Who is this you speak of?" said Baloo. "If it is one of the Monkey-People, perhaps I killed him. If not, surely it is no matter. What are the _Bandar-log_ , that one is so different from another?"

His companions made him no reply, although John gripped the fur of Sherlock's shoulder very tightly.

The night grew long, and John, who was very tired, lay down on Sherlock's back and went to sleep, and did not stir until the light of the new day began to creep into the tree-tops and they were only a few leagues from the Seeonee hills. He was very confused at first, for he had not slept so on Sherlock's back since he was very little, and their overland journey by night had become tangled up in his head, while he slept, with all the happenings of the day before, his flight through the trees and the Cold Lairs and the fight by the water-tanks. He remembered Jayim's long, hairy arms around him, and Sherlock's snarl as he chided him after, and felt very cold inside.

John had not moved, but Sherlock felt the change in his breathing and said, very softly, "art thou awake, Little Brother?"

"Yes," said John, "Or at least, I am not asleep. I can walk the rest of the way."

"There is no need," Sherlock answered. "Ride a little longer, small one." And so John lay quietly, on the boundary between wakefulness and sleep, until Sherlock said, even more softly:

"That which thou did last night, by the reservoir. That was – good."

"It was?"

"Yes." Sherlock's heart was beating very fast, and John could feel it against his own heart where he lay draped over the Panther's back. "It was very brave."

John knew then that Sherlock's anger from the night before had burnt out while John slept, and that perhaps the Panther was a little sorry for what he had said.

"Sherlock?" he said, nearly in a whisper. "Were you afraid?"

Sherlock drew breath as if to speak, and opened his mouth, and then shut it again. And nothing more was said between them for the rest of the way home.


	6. John's Last Vow

The days John spent in the jungle were many, and even Balustrade ceased to count them. John grew tall and strong, and all of the adventures he had with Sherlock would fill a great many books. But the shadow of Shere Khan was always present – if not in John's mind, then in the minds of those who loved him.

It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Sherlock – born of something that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki the Porcupine had told him; but he said to John when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head on Sherlock's beautiful smooth black flank, "Little Brother, how often have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?"

"As many times as there are nuts on that palm," said John, who, naturally, could not count. "What of it? I am sleepy, Sherlock, and Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk – like Mao, the Peacock."

"But this is no time for sleeping. Balustrade knows it; I know it; the Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know."

John laughed. "I have the Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?"

"That is foolishness, man-cub," said Sherlock. "Open those eyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the open jungle at present, for Akela still leads the Pack. But remember, Akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. And many of the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a man."

"And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?" said John. "I am a child of the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!"

Sherlock stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes. "Little Brother," said he, "feel under my jaw."

John put up his strong brown hand, and just under the Panther's silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald spot.

"There is almost no one in the jungle that knows that I carry that scar."

"How did you get it?" asked John.

"It was Akela who gave it to me."

"Akela!" said John. "And yet still you give him courtesy! I do not understand you."

"It is obvious thou dost not, man-cub, which is why I tell thee now. It was a thing that happened when I was young and only recently come to full strength. I ranged far into the world of men, their fields and even their villages when it was night and none were awake to see me. One day I came upon a field of some strange plant. The smell of it was delicious and made me quite dizzy, and it was not until evening that I awoke, and was myself again, that I understood that I had lost the night's hunting to this plant. And so I left, but the memory of it drew me back again and again, until I was nearly every day among these plants that turned my mind to fog. Akela followed me to the poison field one day and dragged me back to his cave, and would not let me leave for three nights, until I once again knew that I was Bagheera, and that no plant would ever again make a plaything of me. But on the first night, I tried to escape, and he bit me and gave me this scar. I was very weak, for I had not eaten, else I would have slain him. In my full strength, man-cub, there is none in the jungle stronger than I."

"Yes," said John, "all the jungle fear Bagheera – all except John." Impulsively, John flung his arms around the great black neck and hugged. "You are my Sherlock, and I do not fear you."

"Oh, thou art a man's cub," said the Black Panther very tenderly. "And even as I returned to my own mind, so thou must consider the dark things that may arise while thou art distracted by fun and pleasure, if thou would not be killed in the Council. You must be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill – and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck – the Pack will turn against him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then – and then – I have it!" said Sherlock, leaping up. "Go thou down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower."

By Red Flower Sherlock meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Of course it exists outside the Law of the Jungle, where beasts fight only with their teeth and claws and tails: every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.

"The Red Flower?" said John. "That grows outside their huts in the twilight. I will get some."

"There speaks the man's cub," said Sherlock proudly. "Remember that it grows in little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for time of need."

"Good!" said John. "I go. But art thou sure, O my Sherlock" – he slipped his arm around the splendid neck and looked deep into the big eyes – "art thou sure that all this is Shere Khan's doing?"

"Dost thou doubt the sharpness of my mind, Little Brother? I am sure."

"Then, by the mystery you solved with your sharp mind in my behalf, I will pay Shere Khan full tale for this, and it may be a little over," said John, and he bounded away.

"That is a man. That is all a man," said Sherlock to himself, lying down again. "Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunting than that man-cub-hunt of thine ten years ago!"

John was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his heart was hot in him. He came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother Mother-Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that something was troubling her man-cub.

"What is it, Son?" she said.

"Some bat's chatter of Shere Khan," he called back. "I hunt among the plowed fields tonight," and he plunged downward through the bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley. There he checked, for he heard the yell of the Pack hunting, heard the bellow of a hunted Sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. Then there were wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves:

"Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show his strength. Room for the leader of the Pack! Spring, Akela!"

The Lone Wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for John heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur knocked him over with his forefoot.

He did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells grew fainter behind him as he ran into the croplands where the villagers lived.

"Sherlock spoke truth," he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle fodder by the window of a hut. "To-morrow is one day both for Akela and for me."

Then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on the hearth. He saw the husbandman's wife get up and feed it in the night with black lumps. And when the morning came and the mists were all white and cold, he saw the man's child pick up a wicker pot plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre.

"Is that all?" said John. "If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear." So he strode round the corner and met the boy, took the pot from his hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy howled with fear.

"They are very like me," said John, blowing into the pot as he had seen the woman do. "This thing will die if I do not give it things to eat"; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. Halfway up the hill he met Sherlock with the morning dew shining like moonstones on his coat.

"Akela has missed," said the Panther. "They would have killed him last night, but they needed thee also. They were looking for thee on the hill."

"I was among the plowed lands. I am ready. See!" John held up the fire-pot.

"Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou not afraid?"

"No. Why should I fear? I remember now – if it is not a dream – how, before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm and pleasant."

All that day John sat in the cave tending his fire pot and dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. He found a branch that satisfied him, and in the evening when one of the Wolves who was loyal to Shere Khan came to the cave and told him rudely enough that he was wanted at the Council Rock, he laughed till the Wolf left him. Then John went to the Council, still laughing.

Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the leadership of the Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly being flattered. Sherlock lay close to John, and the fire pot was between John's knees. When they were all gathered together, Shere Khan began to speak – a thing he would never have dared to do when Akela was in his prime.

"He has no right," whispered Sherlock. "Say so. He is a dog's son. He will be frightened."

John sprang to his feet. "Free People," he cried, "does Shere Khan lead the Pack? What has a tiger to do with our leadership?"

"Seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak – " Shere Khan began.

"By whom?" said John. "Are we all jackals, to fawn on this sly butcher? The leadership of the Pack is with the Pack alone."

There were yells of "Silence, thou man's cub!" "Let him speak. He has kept our Law"; and at last the seniors of the Pack thundered: "Let the Dead Wolf speak." When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long.

Akela raised his old head wearily, and said:

"Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the Jungle, that ye come one by one."

There was a long hush, for though he was weaker than when he was young, no single wolf cared to fight Akela to the death. Then Shere Khan said: "Wolves, what have you to do with this toothless fool? He is doomed to die, so what can his words mean to us now? I put it to you to consider: it is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. It will cost you nothing – indeed it will save you future trouble, for you will be free of this bastard creature who dares to call himself your brother."  
Then more than half the Pack yelled: "A man! A man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place."

"Ah, but you see," said Shere Khan, "he has been among you, and he knows your ways. It is not safe to let him return to the world of men."

"Ye speak truth, Shere Augustus!" yelled the Pack. "He cannot be let to live!"

Akela lifted his head again and said, "He has eaten our food. He has slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of the Law of the Jungle."

"You fools, he is your brother, do you not see it?" snarled Sherlock. "Fur or skin, he is one of you. You gave your word – gave it to me, who paid by setting a dead cub's bones to rest. Faugh, is this how you value your oaths?"

"A mystery solved ten years ago!" the Pack snarled. "What do we care for bones ten years old?"

"Or for a pledge?" said Sherlock, his white teeth bared under his lip in scorn. "Well are ye called the Free People!"

"Wolves, is this who ye would follow?" Akela called out. "He is our brother in all but blood, and ye would kill him here! It is most disappointing. But for the sake of the Honor of the Pack, – a little matter that by being without a leader ye have forgotten, – I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye. I will die without fighting. That will at least save the Pack three lives." He gave a great, sad sigh. "Surely we can reach an agreement."

"No!" John cried out, jumping to his feet. "Akela, you must not!"

"Must not?" asked Shere Khan. "Indeed he cannot. His life is worth nothing to this Pack. He has nothing to bargain with, the the Pack does not like his price."  
Shere Khan walked across the clearing to John, who stood up and stared proudly back into the savage striped face. but Shere Khan instead looked elsewhere, to the other wolves that had begun to draw closer to where he stood, facing John.

"Do you see, now?" he said softly. "Do you see?"

Behind him, John heard the wolves snarling: "He is a man – a man – a man!" Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Sherlock move into a wary crouch.

"You are not their brother," said the Tiger. "You are not a Wolf. You are nothing at all, in this Jungle. You are only meat, for me." Shere Khan's tail began to switch, and John shivered, though he did not drop his eyes.

"I could flick you across the face with my tail – my long tail you like to make fun of – and none here would stop me." Shere Khan looked over at Sherlock, who was growling more loudly. "Not even your friend Bagheera, for he prefers it to what will surely come next."

John stared at the Tiger, and his eyes did not drop. Behind him, he heard the Wolves calling out "Shere Augustus! Shere Augustus!" and drawing closer, pushing him ever nearer to Shere Khan.

Quick as a flash, Sherlock's paw darted out – not to strike the Tiger (for he was not close enough) but to knock over the fire pot. Some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in terror before the leaping flames. All except John, who seized his dead branch and thrust it into the fire till the twigs lit and crackled, and drew it out and pointed it at cowering wolves as the Panther drew next to him.

"Thou art the master," said Sherlock in an undertone. "Save Akela from the death. He was ever thy friend."

Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous look at John as the boy stood all naked, his long hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and quiver.

"Good!" said John, staring round slowly. "I see that ye are dogs. I go from you to my own people – if they be my own people. The Jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship. But I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me." He kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. "There shall be no war between any of us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go." He strode forward to where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin, Sherlock following close behind. "Up, dog!" John cried. "Up, when a man speaks, or I will set that coat ablaze!"

Shere Khan's ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes, for the blazing branch was very near.

"This cattle-killer said he would kill me in the Council because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men. Stir a whisker, Dhurta, and I ram the Red Flower down thy gullet!" He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear.

"Pah! Singed jungle cat – go now! But remember when next I come to the Council Rock, as a man should come, it will be with Shere Khan's hide on my head. For the rest, Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will not kill him, because that is not my will. Nor do I think that ye will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though ye were somebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out – thus! Go!" The fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and John struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling with the sparks burning their fur.

At last there were only Akela, Sherlock, and perhaps fifteen wolves that had taken John's part. Then something began to hurt John inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face.

"What is it? What is it?" he said. "I do not wish to leave the jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Sherlock?"

Sherlock, who understood little enough of such things, stood by helpless and silent. But Akela said:

"No, John. That is only tears such as men use." John looked up at the old Wolf, his cheeks streaked and wet. "Now I know thou art a man, and a man's cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, John. They are only tears." So John sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.

"Now," he said, "I will go to men. But first I must say farewell to my mother." And he went to the cave where Martha Mother-Wolf lived, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably.

"Ye will not forget me?" said John.

"Never while we can follow a trail," said the cubs. "Come to the foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we will come into the croplands to play with thee by night."

"Come soon," said Martha Mother-Wolf, "little naked son of mine. For, listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs."

"I will surely come," said John. "And when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan's hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them in the jungle never to forget me!"

The dawn was beginning to break when John went down the hillside alone, to meet those mysterious things that are called men. And Sherlock sat alone on the great rock at the crest of the hill, and watched his back as he disappeared.


	7. Appledore Gorge

When John left the wolf's cave after the fight with the Pack at the Council Rock, he went down to the plowed lands where the villagers lived, but he would not stop there because it was too near to the jungle, and he knew that he had made at least one bad enemy at the Council. So he hurried on, keeping to the rough road that ran down the valley, and followed it at a steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that he did not know. The valley opened out into a great plain dotted over with rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, and at the other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds, and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over the plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in charge of the herds saw John they shouted and ran away, and the yellow pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked. John walked on, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the village gate he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at twilight, pushed to one side.

"Umph!" he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in his night rambles after things to eat. "So men are afraid of the People of the Jungle here also." He sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one street of the village shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to the gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted and pointed at John.

"They have no manners, these Men Folk," said John to himself. "Only the gray ape would behave as they do." So he threw back his long hair and frowned at the crowd.

"What is there to be afraid of?" said the priest. "Look at the marks on his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child run away from the jungle."

Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped John harder than they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and legs. But he would have been the last person in the world to call these bites, for he knew what real biting meant.

"Arre! Arre!" said two or three women together. "To be bitten by wolves, poor child! He is a handsome boy. His skin is so fair. By my honor, Messua, he is not unlike thy grandson that was taken by the tiger."

"Let me look," said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and ankles, and she peered at John under the palm of her hand. "Indeed he is not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my daughter's boy."

The priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua the richest villager in the place ever since her rich husband had died. So he looked up at the sky for a minute and said solemnly: "What the jungle has taken the jungle has restored. Take the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to honor the priest who sees so far into the lives of men."

"By the mystery that paid my way," said John to himself, "but all this talking is like another looking-over by the Pack! Well, if I am a man, a man I must become."

The crowd parted as the woman beckoned John to her hut, where there was a red lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain chest with funny raised patterns on it, half a dozen copper cooking pots, an image of a Hindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall a real looking glass, such as they sell at the country fairs.

She gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid her hand on his head and looked into his eyes; for she thought perhaps that he might the grandson who had disappeared into the jungle so many years before. So she said, "John, O John!" John did not show that he knew the name, for he had learned to be cautious, but he was very unnerved. "Perhaps this is the name they give to all their cubs," he thought to himself.

"Thou dost not know me," she said sorrowfully. "for all that thou art like my daughter's son. But he is gone, and thou art here, and thou shalt be my son."

John was uneasy, because he had never been under a roof in all the time that he could remember. But as he looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if he wanted to get away, and that the window had no fastenings. "What is the good of a man," he said to himself at last, "if he does not understand man's talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the jungle. I must speak their talk."

It was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to imitate the challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little wild pig. So, as soon as Messua pronounced a word John would imitate it almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many things in the hut.

There was a difficulty at bedtime, because John would not sleep under anything that looked so like a panther trap as that hut, and when they shut the door he went through the window. "Give him his will," said Messua's neighbor, when she came by with a bowl of nuts as a welcoming gift for the foundling. "Remember he can never till now have slept on a bed. If he is indeed sent in the place of your grand-child, he will not run away."

So John stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge of the field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft black nose poked him under the chin.

"Phew!" said Bagheera. "This is a poor reward for following you twenty miles. You smell of wood smoke and cattle – altogether like a man already." The Panther swished his tail impatiently. "Wake up; I bring news."

"Sherlock!" said John, hugging him. "Are all well in the jungle?"

"All except the wolves that were burned with the Red Flower. Now, listen. Shere Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows again, for he is badly singed. When he returns he swears that he will lay thy bones in the bed of the Waingunga."

John smiled, but it was very fierce. "There are two words to that. I also have made a little promise. But news is always good. I am tired to-night, – very tired with new things, Sherlock, – but bring me the news always."

"Yes, you were always slow," answered Sherlock. And John knew that Sherlock would never own up to missing him, but he had trailed John all this long way.

"It is very different here, among men," John said, and Sherlock growled (as he often did) as if to say "it is obviously so," and said:

"Thou art a child of the jungle. Men cannot change this."

"I must learn their ways, Sherlock, if I am to survive here."

"So much learning for an ordinary head! I do not see how thou wilt achieve it," said Sherlock with scorn.

"I will because I must," said John, annoyed.

Sherlock was silent a long minute. "Take care you do not forget the jungle," he said. "For it will never forget you."

"Never. I will always remember that I love thee, and all in my cave. But also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the Pack."

"And that you may yet be cast out of another pack," Sherlock returned. "Men are only men, John, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. When I come down here again, I will wait for you in the bamboos at the edge of the grazing-ground."

For three months after that night John hardly ever left the village gate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had to learn about money, which he did not in the least understand, and caused him a great deal of trouble whenever Messua sent him to buy supplies from another villager; and about plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then the little children in the village made him very angry. Luckily, the Law of the Jungle had taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle life and food depend on keeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them up and breaking them in two. And he tried not to think very much of his Wolf-brothers back in the jungle, or of Sherlock, because, though they were pleasant at first, quite soon those memories would make him feel very black, and very angry to be behind the village walls.

And John did not seem to care about the difference that caste makes between man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the clay pit, John hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When the priest scolded him, John threatened to put him on the donkey too, and the priest told Messua that John had better be set to work as soon as possible; and the village head-man told John that he would have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while they grazed. No one was more pleased than John, for he had come to feel that nothing ever happened to him within the walls of the village.

The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the cattle and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back at night. The very cattle that would trample a white man to death allow themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by children that hardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with the herds they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cattle. But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes carried off by the Jungle People. John went through the village street in the dawn, sitting on the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-blue buffaloes, with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out their byres, one by one, and followed him, and John made it very clear to the children with him that he was the master. He beat the buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and told the other boys to graze the cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be very careful not to stray away from the herd.

An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. The buffaloes generally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing or basking in the warm mud for hours. John drove them on to the edge of the plain where the Waingunga came out of the jungle; then he dropped from Rama's neck, trotted off to a bamboo clump, and found Sherlock. "There you are," said the Panther, "I have waited here very many days. I see you are doing men's work," he added with disdain.

"It is an order," said John. "I am a village herd for a while. What news of Shere Khan?"

"He has come back to this country, and has waited here a long time for you. Now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. But he means to kill you."

"Very good," said John. "So long as he is away, our friends are safe. Either you or one of my four Wolf-brothers do sit on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come out of the village. When he comes back wait for me in the ravine by the dhak tree in the center of the plain. We need not walk into Shere Khan's mouth."

"All right," answered Sherlock. "But it will be Grey Brother who comes, and not me. I have spent long days here, while you dallied and conversed with men."

"But you will come back?" John asked anxiously.

"Yes," answered Sherlock. "But it is not good for me to come here so much." John was content to know that Sherlock would be returning, and so did not ask him what he meant, but bid him goodbye at the edge of the bamboo.

After Sherlock had departed, John picked out a shady place and lay down and slept while the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and then they lie like logs.

Day after day John would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and day after day he would see Gray Brother's back a mile and a half away across the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day after day he would lie on the grass listening to the noises round him, and dreaming of old days in the jungle – or, if his blood were high and he could no bear to lie down, he would walk in the ravine of the Waingunga that ran alongside the plain (it was high summer, and the ravine was now quite dry) and think of his friends who lived and played and hunted further upriver, where the water still flowed, and wondered if any of them other than Gray Brother were thinking of him. And if any sign of Shere Khan had appeared again in the jungles by the Waingunga, John would have heard him in those long, still mornings.

At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the signal place, and he laughed with relief and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the dhak tree, which was all covered with golden-red flowers. There sat Gray Brother, every bristle on his back lifted.

"He has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. He crossed the ranges last night and now waits only a few leagues away," said the Wolf, panting.

John frowned. "I do not like it. I am not afraid to fight Shere Khan, but he is very cunning. I wonder what he might be planning."

"Have no fear," said Gray Brother, licking his lips a little. "I have brought some wises helper who can perhaps guess." There was a rustling in the bamboo behind them, and Akela and Sherlock stepped out from along the cane. John hid his delight, for there were serious matters to hand.

"Shere Khan does not work alone," said Akela gravely. "He has told of his plans to those of the Wolves who take his part."

"Which Wolves are those?" asked Grey Brother, his teeth bared.

"All of those who were burned at Council Rock, of course," said Sherlock. "But there are others who wonder if the Tiger does not have the right way of thinking, and Akela the wrong way. I do not know what he has told them."

"What is his plan?" asked John.

Akela spoke again, saying: "he knows (though by what means I do not know) that you like to walk in the big dry ravine of the Waingunga that runs next to these herding grounds. It is his plan to meet you there and kill you, this very evening."

"Then we haven't much time," said John.

"What wilt thou do?" asked Gray Brother.

"It will be as I have said," answered John. "I will meet him face to face, and he will die."

"And by what means will this happen?" said Akela. "For thou cannot simply stare him to death."

"The buffalo can help us. Not even a tiger can stand against a raging herd. You and Gray Brother must drive them into the ravine so that Shere Khan will be crushed in the stampede. And you, Sherlock (here he turned to the Panther) must keep watch from above, at the top of the ravine, so that they will know when to loose the herd down upon us. It will only work when we are in the deepest part of the gorge, otherwise the Tiger may escape."

"But how will you get out?" asked Gray Brother.

John said nothing.

"It is a foolish plan," said Sherlock, lashing his tail. "It should be I who meets the Tiger."

"It is the only possible plan," said Akela, staring hard at the Panther.

Sherlock did not look at Akela, but instead turned to John. "There are a few small boulders toward the center of the ravine," he said. "Thou must try to climb up and out of the way."

"I will try," returned John, "though I fear they are too large for me."

"Nonetheless, thou wilt try," Sherlock said fiercely. "Promise it!"

"I promise it," said John.

"I will be here to do my part," said Sherlock in answer. And without another word, the Panther stalked off across the plain and disappeared into a cluster of trees at the edge of the jungle.

"Leave him," said Akela. "He will return in time as he has said."

John and the two Wolves sat upon a large tussock and watched the sun sink low and red in the sky. When at last his shining edge touched the tops of the trees, Akela said softly:  
"It is time, I think."

John rose to his feet. "We have a big work in hand. First you must cut the herd in two. Keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls and the plow buffaloes by themselves."

The two wolves ran, ladies'-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which snorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps. In one, the cow-buffaloes stood with their calves in the center, and glared and pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and trample the life out of him. In the other, the bulls and the young bulls snorted and stamped, but though they looked more imposing they were much less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. No six men could have divided the herd so neatly.

"What next!" panted Akela. "They are trying to join again."

"Drive the bulls away to the left, Akela. Gray Brother, when Akela has gone, hold the cows together, and drive them into the foot of the ravine."

"How far?" said Gray Brother, panting and snapping.

"Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan can jump," shouted John. "Keep them there till we come down." The bulls swept off as Akela bayed, and Gray Brother stopped in front of the cows. They charged down on him, and he ran just before them to the foot of the ravine, as Akela drove the bulls far to the left, and John called out:

"Well done! Another charge and they are fairly started. Careful, now – careful, Akela. A snap too much and the bulls will charge. Hujah!" said John to himself, and rubbed at his neck as he surveyed the herd. "Rama the bull is mad with rage. Oh, if I could only tell him what I need of him to-day."

The bulls were turned, to the right this time, and crashed into the standing thicket. The other herd children, watching with the cattle half a mile away, hurried to the village as fast as their legs could carry them, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run away.

Gray Brother had driven the cows far across the plain, and was circling them to keep them Akela had dropped far to the rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the rear-guard. It was a long, long circle, for they did not wish to get too near the ravine and give Shere Khan warning.

At last John walked up to the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down to the ravine itself. From that height you could see across the tops of the trees down to the plain below; but what John looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out.

"I must go meet Shere Khan," he said to himself. "We have him in the trap, but it will only spring if he believes that he has me in a trap of his own."

He walked into the tunnel, on the path that he always went down when he wished for the cool stony solitude. As he walked he sang a song that he had learned in Messua's hut, so that Shere Khan would know for certain that he was coming, and as he sang the echoes of his voice jumped from rock to rock.

He was about half-way down when he sensed some creature behind him, and whirled round to find Sherlock coming up behind him. "I cannot let thee go alone," he said.

"Go back, Sherlock," said John. "This is my fight. You left me to remain by myself among men and creatures I cannot talk to."

"No," snarled Sherlock, "it was thou who left, to be among men."

"It is not so!" John said, his face dark with anger. "I did not wish to leave. I wished only to stay in the jungle and hunt with the wolf-pack and walk through the forests and riverbeds with you."

"It was not my doing," said Sherlock quietly. And then, so softly John almost could not hear, he said:

"Please, let me help thee. Shere Khan is dangerous."

"All right," said John at last. And together they walked down into the ravine. John began to sing again, and after a long time there came back the drawling snarl of an arrogant tiger.

"There he is," said John. "Shall I send a signal to Grey Brother?"

"Let us go further down, and get atop that rock," said Sherlock. "It is good for us, if we can bring him there – he is already quite deep in the ravine."

"Or perhaps he has found a place to stand where his voice echoes," said Shere Khan, walking round the far side of a boulder twenty yards behind them. "Is that John? Oh look, Bagheera is here too." The Tiger licked his lips. "It will be a harder fight, surely, but it only means that I will enjoy my meal more."

The Tiger was very close – not quite close enough to reach them in a single pounce, but John could not run. And even if he escaped, he knew that Shere Khan would only come back.

"We need to draw him deeper," said Sherlock, very quietly. "It is still too shallow here. If the buffalo come down now, Shere Khan will simply leap clear of the herd."

"I will lead him further down the path," said John. He called out to the Tiger:

"Thou hast an advantage here, Shere Khan – the sun is bright and hot, and my eyes are full of sun-spots. If thou hast any honor at all, thou wilt go with me deeper into the ravine, where it is cool and shady, and fight me there."

"It is thee who will die today," spoke the Tiger in amused tones. "If thou prefer to die in the dark, where the kites will not see thee until after I have torn thee to pieces, it is all one to me." He turned his back to John and Sherlock and walked past them down the path, to show that he knew that John could not escape him, for a tiger can outrun a man – and a panther as well, if the path is steep and he is carrying another creature on his back.

John began following Shere Khan down into the ravine, and Sherlock went with him.

"Whatever happens," Sherlock said, in that same quiet voice, "I will be here with thee."

"No," said John, just as quietly. "Thou must go and tell Gray Brother to bring the herd down. If I shout, Shere Khan will know our plans and run to safety."

"But he may kill thee, if thou art by thyself," said Sherlock desperately.

"He may kill me any day, at any hour, until he is dead," answered John. "Thou must leave me here."

Sherlock gazed at John intensely, then turned and ran back up the ravine. Shere Khan, still walking ahead, gave no sign that he had noticed, but John knew that the Tiger knew.

Shere Khan walked until he had reached the deepest part of the ravine, where the cliff walls gaped wide apart. John rarely came this far, for when the sun was high, this part of the ravine blazed with bright light while the narrower passages on either side remained dark and cool. Here, in the wide open space, the Tiger turned and faced John.

"Here?" John said. "Is this the place where we shall fight?"

"Here we are," the Tiger agreed. "Now. Let us take stock." He began to walk slowly toward John. "The Wolves have cast thee out. Bagheera has abandoned thee." Shere Khan stopped and swished his tail, now only a few feet in front of John. "It seems to me a fine place for thee to lose your life, since there is so little for thee to lose."

Shere Khan took another step forward and let out a hot breath that gusted against John's face. John clenched his jaw and stared back, and tried not to let his eyes flicker up along the ravine. He did let himself look around the part of the gorge where they were standing. It was as Sherlock had said – there were a few smallish boulders nearby, each of them roughly twice John's height. He knew that he could climb them if he had some time to do it. But he did not think that he would.

"Oh look," came the Tiger's voice, "here is your panther friend again. Perhaps he would like to watch his pet man-cub as he is killed?"

John turned around and saw Sherlock standing a dozen paces behind him, wide-eyed.

"Thou shalt not harm him, Shere Khan," cried Sherlock, in a curious rumbling tone that John had never heard. "Thy plans will come to nothing." John wondered a bit at this empty talk, but then in the next moment, he felt the faintest possible trembling beneath his feet. The buffalo were coming, and Sherlock was trying to distract the Tiger, and to cover the tremors with his own voice.

"Thou art paltry," Sherlock continued, "and a disgrace to the Jungle. What hast thou to say for thyself, Tiger?"

The Tiger turned to Sherlock. "Bagheera," he said, his voice rich with pity. John stared at Shere Khan, and felt the steady rumble under his feet grow stronger, and hoped that the sly beast would not notice it.

"Who is really the disgrace, Bagheera?" said Shere Khan. "It is not I who have taken a frail, hairless man-cub and tried to make him what he is not."

Sherlock growled loudly to cover the silence, but said nothing.

"It was an experiment," the Tiger continued, "but it failed. A man-cub among the beasts of the jungle is nothing at all."

"No," said John. "It is the other way round. I am a child of the jungle, born of men. Jungle and men will remember me."

The thunder of hooves was stronger – John could almost hear it. So he raised his voice and shouted:

"But they will forget you, Shere Khan, Tiger who died an ignominious death."

Shere Khan opened his mouth to reply, then lifted his head, for he had at last heard the sound of the maddened herd as they thundered closer. John looked sharply up the ravine and saw the first heads of the bulls coming into view. In a flash, Sherlock was at John's side, and John swung onto his back as Sherlock bolted to the edge of the ravine and leapt upon one of the boulders. Only a few seconds later, the torrent of black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the ravine just as boulders go down in floodtime; the weaker buffaloes being shouldered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through the creepers. They knew what the business was before them – the terrible charge of the buffalo herd against which no tiger can hope to stand. John and Sherlock watched as the first of the charging bulls tripped, stumbled, and went on again over something soft, and, with the bulls at his heels, crashed full into the other herd, while the weaker buffaloes were lifted clean off their feet by the shock of the meeting.

Sherlock threw a quick glance behind him to see that John was secure on his back, and then began to make his way out of the ravine, leaping from rock to rock over the heads of the raging buffalo. Soon there were no more boulders to leap to, but they were on higher ground, and John was able to clamber up the last few feet of the rock wall, and come out once again upon the wide plain,where the herds swirled, goring and stamping and snorting.

"Quick, Akela!" John called. "Break them up. Scatter them, or they will be fighting one another. Drive them away, Akela. Hai, Rama! Hai, hai, hai! my children. Softly now, softly! It is all over."  
At John's word, Akela and Gray Brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes' legs, and though the herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, John managed to beat them back with a stick, and the others followed him to the wallows.

The two Wolves doubled back and met Sherlock at the mouth of the ravine, and together they walked toward John, where all four looked over the edge of the ravine.  
Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were coming for him already.

"Brothers, that was a dog's death," said John.

"But no worse than he deserved," said Sherlock.

"Will you bear his skin back to the Council Rock?" asked Gray Brother.

John looked a long time at the carcass of the dead tiger, now disappearing under a cover of feathers as more and more kites descended.

"You would be once again welcomed by the pack, now that he is dead," said Akela.

Sherlock stared at John in silence.

A shrill voice from the sky broke the silence. "A good feast you lay us, friends!" All four beasts looked up to see Wiggi the Kite wheeling down.

"You did me a great service once," John said, "I am only too glad to return the favor."

"A great favor indeed!" said Wiggi. "Not since my grandfather's lifetime have any of my kind eaten tiger-flesh."

"It is Shere Khan," said Gray Brother. "He came to kill the man-cub, but John set him a trap, and now he will trouble the Jungle no more."

"What news is this!" said the Kite in astonishment.

John stood up and looked at Wiggi. "Yes, it is true," he said. "And you must tell everyone. Tell the elephants and the snakes and the jackals. Tell all the creatures of the Jungle that it was I who defeated Shere Khan and left him for the scavengers."

"John," said Sherlock, his voice sharp.

John turned to Akela. "You are safe now," he said. "The Pack will not harm you, nor will Shere Khan poison their ears any longer with his foul talk."

"John!" snapped Sherlock. "Stop this at once!"

"You must tell the Pack of what you have seen with your own eyes," John said to the Wolves, "and soon all the Jungle will know."

"Wilt thou not tell them thyself?" asked Gray Brother.

"No," said John, "for I am staying here in the village. Men have not yet cast me out. If it is a man I must become, I must remain among men to learn their ways."

"It is wisely said," answered Akela. "But thou wilt be sorely missed among the Free People."

"Aye, and others as well," said Gray Brother.

John turned to Sherlock, but the Panther said nothing.

"Sherlock," said John softly. "I will not say good-bye to thee. I hope thou will still visit me at the edge of the village in the evenings.

Still the Panther was stubbornly silent and lashed his tail. John sighed and turned back to the Wolves.

"Now, we must take the buffaloes home. Akela, Gray Brother, help me to herd them."

The Wolves ran off to gather the herd in the misty twilight. John gave Sherlock one last, sad look and then walked off toward the village.

"Goodbye, John," Sherlock said softly.


	8. The Old Shikari

Dusk was falling as John led the herd back to the village, the two wolves running behind to keep the cattle in order. As John drew closer, he saw the other herd-boys waiting for him by the gate.

"There he is!" shouted one of them, and the boys ran out to herd the cattle back through the gates. The biggest of the boys began to scold John, but John paid him no attention and walked through the gate, leaving the other boys to gather in the cattle for the night.

John walked to the center of the village, to a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great fig-tree. It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old Maaran, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into the night. The men told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts. And then Maaran told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged out of their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again a man was carried off at twilight, within sight of the village gates. Maaran had spent much time in the jungle, and even explored the abandoned city that the monkeys call the Cold Lairs. There were also many rumors about Maaran, and though he did not tell these stories, it was said that he had befriended the monkeys, and that he had once shot a tiger.

John strode straight up to the grey-beards sitting under the fig-tree and stood beside them, instead of hanging back like the other children who came only to listen. Most of the men ignored him entirely, and the watchman said only "go back to the herds, boy."

"I belong here among the men of the village," answered John. "For I have slain the tiger."

"Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?" said Maaran. "If thou art so wise, better bring his hide to this circle, so that thy pretty stories do not blow away with the wind like the smoke of this fire. Better still, talk not when thy elders speak."

"I did not think to take his hide," said John, "for I believed you to be men of honor. But I will take you to see the corpse where he lies, if thou art not afraid to venture outside the village walls after dark."

Maaran was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the head-man stared.

"Well," said the watchman, now looking at Maaran, "wilt thou go?"

And so all the men (with the most daring of the children trailing after them) took up torches and made a party and struck out together to the plain. John led them to the edge of the ravine, and threw down his own torch onto the bare rocky ground so that it would cast its light in the dark reaches. All the kites and vultures scattered when he did, and then all the men could see the body of the tiger. The body was torn and bloodied, but there could be no mistake.

"It is the same tiger," said the head-man. "We will tell Messua. Her grandson is avenged."

All of the gathered men now looked at John with respect, and something like fear. There was much talk and clamor as the group moved back toward the village, and in that whole great gathered crowd only John and Maaran were silent.

After that night, the villagers treated John with all the courtesy given to grown men, and did not make him drive out the cattle any more, but left him free to wander the village as he pleased. But they also looked at him with fear, and muttered sometimes behind his back, calling him Jungle Demon and talking also of sorcery. But John, who did not know any better, thought that this was all a part of what it felt like to be a man. "Truly I am one of these men now," he said to himself, "and their ways are not the ways of the Pack. If they do not make me feel like a brother, perhaps at least they will not cast me out if I can learn to live as they do." So John began to spend more and more of his days with Messua in her shop in the center of the village, fetching things that she needed, and Messua would smile at him, and began to call him her grandson when she spoke of him. And every night, before the gate was shut, John would walk around to the far side of the village, outside the wall, where the village sat closest to the edge of the jungle, and wait for Sherlock. But Sherlock never came.

One day, about a month after the death of Shere Khan, Messua's neighbor came to their hut in the morning, greatly upset. "My son, my son, he has gone missing!" She wailed. "He was out among the herds last night, but never returned. Thou [she said to John], who art escaped from the jungle, canst thou find him and bring him back to me?"

John pledged to try, and Messua soothed the woman with milky tea while John set off for the jungle in the direction where the boy had vanished to look for the lost neighbor-cub. Soon he was in a part of the jungle he had never seen before, a bright clearing in the middle of the trees. The air was heavy with a strange flowery fragrance. John edged cautiously into the sun-struck glade and nearly stumbled over the form of his neighbor's son, who was curled up fast asleep.

"Aoua!" cried John, as he shook the boy awake. "It is time for thee to waken, and to go home! Much trouble hast thou caused, and much worry for thy mother!" The boy was still bleary from sleep, and blinked into the morning sun, but once John had made him understand, he was much abashed, and quickly set about rousing himself so that they might return to the village. John, meanwhile, turned around to give the glade one last looking-over when a familiar dark shape caught his eye.

"Thou must return alone," he said to the boy, "for there is something I must do before I return to the village." He walked with the boy a little way back, and then pointed the way back to the village once the rocky grazing-ground became visible through the thick trees. Once the boy had gone in what John was satisfied was the right direction, John returned to the clearing alone and looked again for that sleek black form he had seen stretched out amid the fragrant plants. John clenched his fists and then crossed the clearing so that he could shake Sherlock awake, as well.

Sherlock rolled over at the first touch of John's hand and looked up at him with dreamy eyes. "Hallo, John," he said in a slow voice. "Hast thou come for me, too? Or only for that little lost cub, now that thou art a man?"

"Come on, Sherlock," said John grimly. "We are going back to the Council Rock together."

Sherlock was obliging enough, though his mind was fogged with the herb and he was not quite himself, and together he and John made slow passage through the jungle back to the Seeonee Hills. Sherlock stumbled sometimes, but John kept his hand on Sherlock's shoulder, and by the time the sun was high, they had reached the rock-strewn clearing where the Free People of the Seeonee district gathered. Most of the jungle people are asleep at midday, but one pair of watchful eyes saw them approach.

"Good hunting, Akela," said John, as the great shaggy grey wolf came forward from among the trees. "Sherlock is– he is not well."

"It is as before," Akela said gravely. "I will take him to Martha Mother-Wolf's cave."

"Thou certainly wilt not," said Sherlock.

But Akela talked as though Sherlock had not spoken at all. "The last time he was so afflicted, I cared for him myself, but I was younger then, and stronger. Go and fetch Balustrade, and perhaps the three of us to-gether will be able to prevent him from running away."

"Sherlock," said John, "I will return to the cave with Baloo very soon, and I hope I will see you there," and then he ran off into the jungle to look for the old Bear.

Sherlock allowed himself to be led, with a very ill grace, in the direction of Martha Mother-Wolf's cave.

"It is a lucky thing he found you, Sherlock," said Akela in a severe tone. Sherlock said nothing, but only growled.

"Know thou," Akela added softly, "he will not stay."

"He might," the Panther said.

"Thou must not depend on it, Sherlock. He has chosen to return to his own kind."

Martha Mother-Wolf greeted them at the mouth of the cave, and led Sherlock to the cool area in the very back where he would be most comfortable. At just that moment, John and Balustrade appeared over the ridge. "Bagheera!" roared the Bear. "Where hast thou gone, old wastrel? Barrao! I will slay thee for the worry thou hast caused me! Betwixt thee and this man-cub, truly my fur will soon be grey."

For the next quarter hour Martha and Baloo took it in turns to chide, fuss, and lament over him. Sherlock endured it all with an ill grace, and at last the Bear and the old she-wolf retired to the front of the cave (Baloo still muttering darkly) and John came to the back of the cave.

"Thou art still here," the Panther said.

John sat down next to Sherlock, and leaned up against the glossy black hide, and said nothing at all for a long time.

"Was this it, Sherlock?" he said at last. "Was this the plant that poisoned thy mind, many years ago?" When Sherlock did not answer, he sighed. "Thou must take better care of thyself. Akela is old and feeble, and cannot do for thee what once he did. And I will – I will not always be here, Sherlock."

"Thou couldst stay here."

"I am a man," John answered. "I live in the village now."

"Stay, John," said Sherlock very softly. "Among the creatures who have always been thy family."

John stood up. "I have been away too long already." He lay his hand against Sherlock's neck and then walked out into the jungle. Sherlock ran to the mouth of the cave and watched as John disappeared in the direction of the village.

"Let him go," said Balustrade softly, at Sherlock's shoulder. "It is time."

Sherlock lashed his tail, and said nothing.

Sherlock remained in Martha Mother-Wolf's cave three more days. Balustrade and the two Wolves took it in turns to watch over him, and to bring him food, for they did not trust him to hunt on his own without returning to the field of dizzying plants. All that time, Sherlock sulked and did not once give thanks to his friends, though of course they knew better than to expect it.

At moonrise on the fourth day, Akela returned to the cave and said to Martha Mother-Wolf and Baloo, who sat together at the cave-mouth:

"We cannot be sure that he will ever be cured; but a creature such as Sherlock cannot be kept caged forever. We must let him return to the open jungle, and hope that he will not choose to ruin himself among the plants."

"There are many ways for that poor beast to ruin himself," said Martha Mother-Wolf, who was thinking of John.

"We will do as thou judge best, Akela," said Baloo. The old Bear climbed to his feet and padded to the back of the cave and roused Sherlock where he lay sunken in gloom.

"Bagheera," he said. "Thou art free. Promise us only that thou wilt avoid the deadly herb, and thou may once again go thy own way."

"Yes, I promise," said Sherlock, and leapt to his feet at once, for he was very impatient to leave. Baloo was too wide to pass, so the Bear backed himself out of the cave, and Sherlock bounded past his friends and out into the open night. "Have a care for thyself," called Martha Mother-Wolf after him. But Sherlock did not hear, for he was eager to return to his watch that had been forced to abandon for several nights.

Sherlock had indeed spent many days in the glade, breathing in the enchanting fragrance of the sweet plants. But another thing his friends did not know is that every night after the sun went down, Sherlock visited the village. Some days he told himself that he would not go, but in the end he always went. Even John did not know he was there, for the Panther always took care that John should not see him. Every night, as John walked along the outside wall, Sherlock would crouch behind a boulder, or conceal himself behind the tree-line. Once John had gone inside, Sherlock would draw closer, to watch and to listen and to learn what he could about John's new home, and about his new life.

Sherlock approached the village less cautiously than usual, for he was in great haste after several days away. He ran swiftly across the open plain, milk-white with moonlight, and slipped into the shadows of the wall. The Panther's eyes were on the ground, and on the gate in front of him, which had only just closed for the night. He did not think to look up to the top of the wall, where a figure stood watching him. It was old Maaran the Hunter, who had heard small noises on his walk back to his hut late one night, and had climbed the wall to try to catch a glimpse of whatever was stirring outside. He had spent many vain nights watching after that, for Sherlock was very cunning, and had stayed always out of sight. But tonight, in his haste, the Panther was not so careful, and at last, the old hunter's eyes found what they had long sought. "Ahaa!" he thought to himself. "It is another trouble-maker, come to steal children from the very threshold of the village. I will give him something to cut his teeth." He also thought that if he killed the panther, then he would win back some of the honor that the people of the village had given to John after the boy slew the great tiger, but he did not say this to himself. He only crept back down into the village, and made his plans.

The next night, Sherlock returned to the village to watch and listen, and Maaran watched for him from the top of the wall, saw him for only a moment before he disappeared under the shadow of the wall, and the old hunter dared not open the gates and face a panther alone, on foot. The next night Sherlock was so quiet that Maaran did not see him as he came, but only heard the rustle of leaves across the plain as he disappeared back into the jungle. But on the third night, as Sherlock crept across the grazing-ground, a kite flew screaming overhead, and Sherlock was stricken into watchful silence at the noise. This movement caught the eye of the old man at the top of the village wall. Maaran lost no time, but aimed his Tower Musket and fired. Sherlock cried out in pain and fell to the ground.

At the sound of the gunshot, several villagers came out of their huts, John and Messua among them, to see what had happened. "I have shot a great beast!" Maaran said to them. "It will plague us no longer."

"What beast is this?" asked the villagers. "The great tiger is dead." And so Maaran said he would show them, and once again a party gathered and took torches outside the wall, onto the plain. But when they arrived at the place that Maaran wished to show them, there was no body, only a great spill of blood.

"Thy beast has run off, Maaran," said the head-man, and John could not help smiling to himself.

"I have wounded him," answered Maaran, "and he surely knows now that if he returns I will kill him. But I do not think he will return. Look, his blood is all over the ground. Come, let us return home."

"Was it another tiger?" asked the Barber, who was one of the great gossips of the village.

"It was a panther," said Maaran. At this, John felt his heart grow cold inside him. He returned to the village with the others, but lay awake all night, staring at the roof of the hut with his insides full of fear. When dawn finally broke, he ran to the village gate and out into the open plain to the edge of the jungle. He had only gone a few steps inside when he was met by Gray Brother.

"Does he live?" said John, before Gray Brother had a chance to speak.

"He did when I left him half an hour ago," said Gray Brother.

"Take me to him," said John grimly.


	9. The Empty Hut

John did not speak as he and Gray Brother raced through the jungle. As they went, the only noise was the soft brush of four paws and two human feet (but such quiet, that knew the jungle so well) on the dry ground. Gray Brother led him past the Council Rock and down to the banks of the Waingunga where Balustrade often spent his days when he was not busy with wolf-cubs to teach. There, in the soft mud of the bank underneath a low-hanging palm, Sherlock lay on his side, and Martha Mother-Wolf crouched beside him. Akela stood a small way off, silent and watchful.

John flew at once to Sherlock's side. His friend was panting shallowly, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a fierce grimace. The glossy black fur was stained dull black with dried blood, and still more blood ran freely from the wound in his chest. His eyes were closed, and his breath was very light and fast. John kneeled beside him, one hand on his friend's shoulder, and pressed his lips together.

"He lives," said Martha Mother-Wolf softly, "but maybe not for long. The bullet is still inside. It will poison him soon."

"That is not the way of bullets," said Akela, who had come up while they were talking, "but all the same, it must be taken out."

"I will do it," said John, with a stony set to his jaw.

Two pairs of Wolf eyes turned toward him. "How will you do it?" asked Martha Mother-Wolf.

John said nothing, for he was not himself sure it could be done. He took off the cloth from his waist, stepped down to the river and soaked it in the shallow water. The water felt cool to his arms, dripping down from the cloth as he carried it back to Sherlock, and John noticed that he had not felt anything since the moment Maaran had told of the beast he had shot – neither hunger nor a sore head from little sleep, nor the sting of sharp leaves against his legs as he ran through the jungle with Gray Brother.  
John kneeled down once more and rubbed the wet cloth very gently over Sherlock's chest, wiping away the blood. Once the blood had been washed off, John washed out the cloth in the river, wrung it dry, and ran it once more over the Panther's chest. All at once he felt a strange lump in the muscle, and his hands went very still.

The Wolves looked at John.

"I know where the bullet is," he said. "It is not very deep."

John laid his right hand on Sherlock's shoulder once more, and leaned down and whispered in his friend's ear "I am sorry." Then he reached down and stuck two fingers into the wound. Sherlock jerked to one side, and beside them Martha Mother-Wolf gave a small yelp, but John held steady, and petted Sherlock's shoulder until the Panther's shudders calmed.

John pushed his fingers further into the wounded flesh until they touched the small, hard bullet. Sherlock groaned, though his eyes still did not open. "I am sorry for the pain," John murmured. "It will not be long, now." He felt more sure of himself now, and pushed still further until he could curl one finger around the bullet. Very slowly, he drew his fingers out from the wound in Sherlock's chest, and as he pulled away the bullet dropped into his hand, and then to the ground, for after all the strain and concentration John's hand had begun to shake.

Martha Mother-Wolf stepped close to Sherlock and began licking the wound clean, for the blood had begun to flow again now that the bullet was gone. Akela walked up the bank, to where Gray Brother had stood watching, and spoke to him. John only stood still, until at last he bent over, picked up the bullet, and flung it as far out into the river as he could.

Gray Brother had disappeared after speaking to Akela, but now he returned, hot and panting, and came all the way down the bank to where the other beasts remained with Sherlock. Akela took up the task of licking the wound, and John sat down by Sherlock's great black head and stroked his soft neck tenderly. The sun traveled high in the sky as the four friends sat with Sherlock, each Wolf taking a turn to lick the wound clean. John said nothing, but watched the buzzing insects as they swooped low over the river, stared at the rustling leaves on the opposite bank, and tried not to mind the ache of hunger inside him, did not dare to think at all.

It was only as the sun began to dip toward the hills that Sherlock stirred. John, who had been dozing, was awake at once. Sherlock groaned and lifted his head, and rolled his eyes around to take in the scene.

"Do not talk," directed Akela, before Sherlock could say anything. "Simply rest. You are safe here."

"He will need water," said Martha Mother-Wolf softly. John stood up and ran along the bank until he found a plant with broad sturdy leaves. He tore one of these off its stem and took it down to the river, where he held the leaf to make a sort of bowl. The leaf would not hold very much water at once, but John took the water to Sherlock, who drank it, and returned for more until the Panther was satisfied. After that, Sherlock closed his eyes once more, and his breathing became slow and even.

Gray Brother, who had been lying watchful some feet away, now rose to his feet. "I will hunt for us," he said.

"No," said Martha Mother-Wolf, "I will hunt." She turned to John. "And you must go back to the village – only to sleep! – and return again tomorrow."

So John left them, and reached the village just before the gate closed for the night. Messua was very angry, and scolded him, but John said nothing, and ate two great bowls full of stew and went right to sleep, for the day had left him very worn out. The next morning John went back to the riverbank, and found Martha Mother-Wolf there with Balustrade, and stayed with them for several hours as Sherlock slept. When he came back the next day there was no-one there, so he went instead to Martha Mother-Wolf's cave. It was a much more pleasant place to pass the day, cool and dark, and John did not return to the village until nearly sunset. Once again Messua was angry, but John would not tell her where he had been. And because John was no longer a herd-boy, she could not make him stay, but she sent him to bed without supper. But John had eaten in Martha Mother-Wolf's cave and did not mind the punishment.

On the fourth day, Sherlock was awake and sitting up when John arrived, just after midday. Akela was crouching beside him, but he stood up and left the cave when he saw John come in. "I think he will want to speak with you," he said quietly to John as he passed him.

John sat down on the floor next to Sherlock. "Good hunting, man-cub," said the Panther. His voice was still very weak and dry.

"It was for the village hunter," answered John. "Or very nearly."

"Is this hunter one of your new friends, perhaps?" asked Sherlock bitterly.

"No," said John. I do not have any friends there, he thought to himself. But out loud he only said: "I have looked for you every night, and never seen you. How is it that Maaran was able to shoot you from the village wall?"

"Do not think I have not come just because you have not seen me. Perhaps your eyes have grown dull, living among men."

"I do not understand."

"Yes, I can see that," said Sherlock, and his voice was hard not only because he was ill, but because he was also very angry. "You looked, but not well, just as you have done the entire last moon in that village."

"It is my home now, Sherlock," said John stiffly, for his heart was sad within him, and he was tired of needing to say it to Sherlock again and again.

"Is it? You saw, but you did not learn. But I have learned, Little Brother, because you have not. The truth is that they do not love you, in the village."

"What do you mean?" said John. "How can you know this?"

"Because I have stood by the village wall at night, and listened to the speeches of the men and women as they gather nearby, to speak in a place they believe to be private."

John was so astonished that for a moment he forgot his anger. "But how did you understand them?"

"I listened awhile until I knew the patterns of the words, and over time I was able to work out what they meant," answered Sherlock. "It was not _difficult_. They spoke of many things, but often it was of you."

"What did they say?" asked John, though he was not certain he wished to know.

"I was not sure, at first, that it was you," said Sherlock, "for they did not often use your name."

"Sherlock," said John. "Tell me."

Sherlock heaved a sigh and looked John right in the face. "Sorcerer," he said, "and Wolf's Brat. These are the names they have given you. Many think you are a demon who has come to steal away the children."

"Steal them away!" John was on his feet now. "But I –"

"Yes," said Sherlock. "I was there also. I remember."

John clenched and unclenched his fists. The rage burned so brightly inside him at that moment that, if he had seen any one of the villagers – Maaran or the old barber, or even Messua or Kamya, the little boy he had brought back from the jungle – he would have struck them.

"They hate me," John said.

"Yes. And fear you."

"As the Pack once feared me."

"Yes," answered Sherlock. "And like the Pack, they –"

"Stop," shouted John. "I did not ask you this." John was breathing heavily, and feeling so many different things he could not tell one from another. "This is not a thing I deserve."

"No," said Sherlock, very softly.

"The Wolves did not trust me," John said, "for they saw that I was different: too like a man. And now men do not trust me, for they look at me and see that I am different: too like a beast. And from this, this difference, they must _protect_ themselves. Tell me," John said – and his voice became suddenly very quiet – "why is this difference always _my fault?_ "

Sherlock shivered at John's sudden shout, and his eyes dropped – for he could not hold John's gaze when the man-cub was angry. But he said:

"John, who is here with you?"

"It is – it is you, Sherlock, only you. Akela has left, and I do not know where Martha Mother-Wolf has gone, for it is midday, and –"

"Yes," said Sherlock. "Only me. And what am I?"

"You are – you are a panther. An injured panther with a cruel tongue," he added spitefully.

"No, John," Sherlock repeated. "What am I?"

John only stared at him, confused, and so Sherlock said:

"I am a Panther who is better known to the Wolves of the Seeonee Pack than by any of his own kind, who prized his mind above all else and yet nearly gave up his mind to the sweet fragrances of a plant. And then again, though I had escaped from it once, I went among it once more, in full knowledge that I would forget myself, for my friend had left me behind, and I wished to forget. What am I, John?"

John felt dazed. "I do not know how to answer, Sherlock. You are not like any other beast in the jungle."

"No," said Sherlock. "And neither are you. You and I are both alone, among our kind." The Panther struggled to his feet and shook off the dust, for he had not risen in many days. "But we are not alone."

John stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the great glossy neck, as he had longed to do for many days, and for the long weeks before as well. "I will not be parted from you again," he said, and Sherlock rubbed his head against John's shoulder. "I will go back to the village once more, to bid good-bye to Messua, for she was kind to me. But to stay in her house will only bring trouble."

"And then you will return to the jungle?" asked Sherlock.

"Yes," said John, "but I cannot stay here. The Pack has cast me out. Even if some of the Wolves take my part, I will always have enemies, and I do not wish to trouble my friends."

"The jungle is large," Sherlock answered. "We will find a place where we can run and hunt and climb trees and live as we like."

John smiled at the thought. "I wonder if there is such a place."

Sherlock looked John, and there was a touch of mischief in his face. "Shall we try to find it?"

The golden evening light was on the ground when Martha Mother-Wolf returned to her cave. She had thought she would find Sherlock there, and perhaps that John would still be with him. Instead, she found only Akela

"Where is Sherlock?" said Martha Mother-Wolf.

"Gone," answered Akela in a strange voice.

"We must find him at once," she said. "Where is John? Does he search for Sherlock also?"

"John is not here," Akela said.

"Do you think they are to-gether?" asked Martha Mother-Wolf.

"I am sure of it." He turned for a moment to the other Wolf, grown old and grey, as he was himself, before setting his eyes on the far horizon. "Do not trouble yourself, Mother," he said. "They will be all right. They are not alone."


End file.
